(Apa Handbooks in Psychology) David Ricky Matsumoto, Hyi Sung Hwang, Mark G Frank-APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication-American Psychological Association (2015)

APA Handbook of

Nonverbal Communication

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APA Handbooks in Psychology

APA Handbook of

Nonverbal Communication

David Matsumoto, Hyisung C. Hwang, and Mark G. Frank, Editors-in-Chief

American Psychological Association • Washington, DC

Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, including, but not limited to, the process of scanning and digitization, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by American Psychological Association 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242 www.apa.org To order APA Order Department P.O. Box 92984 Washington, DC 20090-2984 Tel: (800) 374-2721; Direct: (202) 336-5510 Fax: (202) 336-5502; TDD/TTY: (202) 336-6123 Online: www.apa.org/pubs/books/ E-mail: [emailprotected] In the U.K., Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, copies may be ordered from American Psychological Association 3 Henrietta Street Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU England American Psychological Association Staff Gary R. VandenBos, PhD, Publisher Julia Frank-McNeil, Senior Director, APA Books Theodore J. Baroody, Director, Reference, APA Books Patricia D. Mathis, Reference Editorial Manager, APA Books Lisa T. Corry, Project Editor, APA Books Typeset in Berkeley by Cenveo Publisher Services, Columbia, MD Printer: Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, MI Cover Designer: Naylor Design, Washington, DC Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data APA handbook of nonverbal communication / David Matsumoto, Hyisung C. Hwang, and Mark G. Frank, editors-in-chief. — First edition. pages cm. — (APA handbooks in psychology series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4338-1969-8 — ISBN 1-4338-1969-4 1. Nonverbal communication. 2. Body language. 3. Facial expression. I. Matsumoto, David Ricky. II. Hwang, Hyi Sung. III. Frank, Mark G. IV. American Psychological Association. V. Title: American Psychological Association handbook of nonverbal communication. BF637.N66A63 2016 153.6′9—dc23 2015002620 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States of America First Edition http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-000

Contents

About the Editors-in-Chief�� vii Contributors�� ix Series Preface�� xi Foreword��xiii Introduction �� xix Part I. Overview and History�� 1 Chapter 1. A History of Research on Nonverbal Communication: Our Divergent Pasts and Their Contemporary Legacies�� 3 Valerie Manusov Chapter 2. T he Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication Theory and Research: Past, Present, Future�� 17 Caroline F. Keating Part II. Factors of Influence�� 43 Chapter 3. Evolution and Nonverbal Communication�� 45 Mark G. Frank and Allison Z. Shaw Chapter 4. The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication�� 77 David Matsumoto and Hyisung C. Hwang Chapter 5. The Developmental Arc of Nonverbal Communication: Capacity and Consequence for Human Social Bonds�� 103 Caroline F. Keating Chapter 6. Gender and Nonverbal Behavior�� 139 Marianne LaFrance and Andrea C. Vial Chapter 7. Personality�� 163 Elysia R. Todd and David C. Funder Part III. Sources of Messages�� 187 Chapter 8. The Physical Environment and Nonverbal Communication �� 189 Miles L. Patterson and Susanne Quadflieg Chapter 9. Appearance and Physiognomy �� 221 Daniel E. Re and Nicholas O. Rule v

Contents

Chapter 10. Facial Expressions�� 257 Hyisung C. Hwang and David Matsumoto Chapter 11. The Voice: From Identity to Interactions �� 289 Sophie Scott and Carolyn McGettigan Chapter 12. Gesture �� 307 Erica A. Cartmill and Susan Goldin-Meadow Chapter 13. Eye Behavior and Gaze �� 335 Reginald B. Adams Jr. and Anthony J. Nelson Chapter 14. Signs, Signals, and Symbols in Olfactics�� 363 Jeannette Haviland-Jones, Patricia Wilson, and Robin Freyberg Chapter 15. The Body: Postures, Gait, Proxemics, and Haptics�� 387 David Matsumoto, Hyisung C. Hwang, and Mark G. Frank Chapter 16. N onverbal Communication in Primates: Observational and Experimental Approaches �� 401 Lisa A. Parr, Jérôme Micheletta, and Bridget M. Waller Part IV. Methodology �� 423 Chapter 17. M easuring the Dynamic Stream of Display: Spontaneous and Intentional Facial Expression and Communication�� 425 Ross Buck and Michael Miller Chapter 18. Measuring the Voice�� 459 Andrew Rosenberg, Frank Enos, and Julia Hirschberg Chapter 19. Measuring Gesture �� 499 R. Breckinridge Church, Spencer D. Kelly, and Elizabeth Wakefield Chapter 20. Measuring Eye Behavior �� 525 Frank M. Marchak Chapter 21. Methods in Olfactory Research�� 539 Robin Freyberg, Patricia Wilson, and Jeannette Haviland-Jones Chapter 22. M easuring Body Movement: Current and Future Directions in Proxemics and Kinesics�� 551 Nele Dael, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Andrea Kleinsmith, and Christine Mohr Chapter 23. Measuring Nonverbal Sensitivity�� 589 Ronald E. Riggio and Annick Darioly Index�� 607

About the Editors-in-Chief

David Matsumoto, PhD, is an internationally acclaimed author and psychologist. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1981 with High Honors in Psychology and Japanese. He subsequently earned his master’s degree (1983) and doctoral degree (1986) in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently professor of psychology and director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University, where he has been since 1989. He is also director of Humintell, LLC, a company that provides research, consultation, and training on nonverbal behavioral analysis and cross-cultural adaptation. Dr. Matsumoto has studied culture, emotion, social interaction, and communication for more than 30 years. His books include well-known titles such as Culture and Psychology, the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, and Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Psychology. He is the recipient of many awards and honors in the field of psychology, including being named a G. Stanley Hall lecturer by the American Psychological Association. He is the series editor for the Cambridge University Press series on Culture and Psychology and former editor-in-chief for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Hyisung C. Hwang, PhD, is an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University. Her research interests are emotion, nonverbal behaviors, facial expressions, and deception. She is the author of numerous scientific articles, book chapters, and conference presentations on these topics. She is also coeditor of the book Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Mark G. Frank, PhD, is a professor and director of the Communication Science Center at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and he is also the sole proprietor of Mark G. Frank, LLC. Dr. Frank received his doctoral degree in social psychology from Cornell University in 1989. Afterward, he received a National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health to do postdoctoral research with Dr. Paul Ekman in the Psychiatry Department at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School. In 1992, he joined the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where he worked for 4 years until he joined the Communication Department at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 2005, he accepted a position in his hometown at the School of Informatics at the University at Buffalo, where he created and directs the Communication Science Center. He has published numerous research articles on facial expressions, emotion, interpersonal deception, and also violence in extremist groups. He has had research funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Defense to examine deception, aggression, and hidden emotion

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About the Editors-in-Chief

behaviors in checkpoint, law enforcement, and counterterrorism situations. He is also the codeveloper of a patented automated computer system to read facial expressions, for which he won a Visionary Innovator Award from the University at Buffalo. Dr. Frank has used these findings to lecture, consult with, and train virtually all U.S. federal law enforcement/intelligence agencies as well as local/state and select foreign agencies such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Australian Federal Police, and Scotland Yard (United Kingdom). He is also one of the original members and senior fellow of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorism Research and Analysis Project. He has presented briefings on deception and counterterrorism to the U.S. Congress as well as the National Academies of Sciences. He has also given workshops to the U.S. Federal Judiciary, various state courts, and foreign judges and magistrates.

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Contributors

Reginald B. Adams Jr., PhD, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, PhD, UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom Ross Buck, PhD, Department of Communication, University of Connecticut, Storrs Erica A. Cartmill, PhD, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles R. Breckinridge Church, PhD, Department of Psychology, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago Nele Dael, PhD, Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland Deborah D. Danner, PhD, Department of Behavior Science and Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky, Lexington Annick Darioly, PhD, Les Roches International School of Hotel Management, Bluche, Switzerland Frank Enos, PhD, D. E. Shaw Group, New York, NY Robin Freyberg, PhD, Department of Psychology, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, New York, NY Wallace V. Friesen, PhD, University of California (Retired) David C. Funder, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside Susan Goldin-Meadow, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL Jeannette Haviland-Jones, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ Julia Hirschberg, PhD, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY Caroline F. Keating, PhD, Department of Psychology, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY Spencer D. Kelly, PhD, Department of Psychology, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY Andrea Kleinsmith, PhD, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville Marianne LaFrance, PhD, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT Valerie Manusov, PhD, Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle Frank M. Marchak, PhD, Veridical Research and Design Corporation, Bozeman, MT Carolyn McGettigan, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of London, Egham, United Kingdom Jérôme Micheletta, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Contributors

Michael Miller, PhD, Department of Communication, University of Connecticut, Storrs Christine Mohr, PhD, Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland Anthony J. Nelson, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park Lisa A. Parr, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Center for Translational Social Neuroscience, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA Miles L. Patterson, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Missouri, St. Louis Susanne Quadflieg, PhD, School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, England Daniel E. Re, PhD, Social Perception and Cognition Lab, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Ronald E. Riggio, PhD, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA Andrew Rosenberg, PhD, Department of Computer Science, Queens College, City University of New York, New York Nicholas O. Rule, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Sophie Scott, PhD, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom Allison Z. Shaw, PhD, Department of Communication, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo Elysia R. Todd, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside Andrea C. Vial, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT Elizabeth Wakefield, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL Bridget M. Waller, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom Patricia Wilson, PhD, Department of Psychology, La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA

Series Preface

The APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication is the 19th publication to be released in the American Psychological Association’s APA Handbooks in Psychology® series, instituted in 2010. The series comprehends both single volumes and multivolume sets focused on core subfields or on highly focused content areas and emerging subfields. A complete listing of the series titles to date can be found on p. ii. Each publication in the series is primarily formulated to address the reference interests and needs of researchers, clinicians, and practitioners in psychology. Each also addresses the needs of graduate students for well-organized and highly detailed supplementary texts, whether to “fill in” their own specialty areas or to acquire solid familiarity with other specialties and emerging trends across the breadth of psychology. Many of the sets additionally bear strong interest for professionals in pertinent complementary fields (i.e., depending on content area), be they corporate executives and human resources personnel; psychiatrists; doctors, nurses, and other health personnel; teachers and school administrators; counselors; legal professionals; and so forth. Under the direction of small and select editorial boards consisting of top scholars in the field, with chapters authored by both senior and rising researchers and practitioners, each reference commits to a steady focus on best science and best practice. Coverage converges on what is currently known in the particular topical area (including basic historical reviews) and the identification of the most pertinent sources of information in both the core and evolving literature. Volumes and chapters alike pinpoint practical issues; probe unresolved and controversial topics; and highlight future theoretical, research, and practice trends. The editors provide guidance to the “dialogue” among chapters through internal cross-referencing that demonstrates a robust integration of topic. The user is thus offered a clear understanding of the complex interrelationships within each field. With the imprimatur of the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and the largest association of psychologists in the world, and with content edited and authored by some of its most respected members, the APA Handbooks in Psychology series is an indispensable and authoritative reference resource for researchers, instructors, practitioners, and field leaders alike. Gary R. VandenBos APA Publisher

Foreword

The table of contents of this handbook offers the reader a sufficient overview and provides adequate overall integration. In this foreword, we have chosen to provide ideas and observations about nonverbal behavior and its scientific study on the basis of our years of involvement in the field. In this narrative, we do not attempt to reference every article, presentation, or conversation—as no amount of effort could do justice to those who contributed to our decades of learning. We focus broadly on constructs, methods, and processes that are important to nonverbal studies in any area. We assume some variation in terminology here, but these same constructs and methods are discussed in more detail in the chapters that follow. Without doubt, from the beginning of time, the survival of human and many nonhuman species has depended on attending to nonverbal behavior. For the hunter, understanding the patterns of the behavior of prey was essential for providing food. For the prey, detecting the behavior of the hunter was essential to staying alive. To defeat and survive, the ancient warrior, like the modern athlete, had to quickly study the adversary, assessing strength, agility, and action patterns along with deceptiveness to anticipate and defend against probable actions. Like the ancients, we hone our observational skills to understand the context and the likely intent of the other and to interpret their physical characteristics and nonverbal actions. We are particularly attentive to nonverbal behaviors in contexts in which a shared language is not available, such as with infants who cannot yet speak, with dementia patients who have lost the capacity of speech, or with animals whose communicative mode we do not fully comprehend (see Chapter 5, this handbook, on development as well as Chapter 16 on nonverbal behavior in nonhuman primates). Additionally, we focus on nonverbal behavior when a speaker is unable or unwilling to relate facts, emotional states, or attitudes in words, such as when emotionally loaded memories are repressed. Clearly, nonverbal behaviors and patterns provide essential information when the other has the motive and intent to deceive. In these contexts, the psychotherapist or interrogator may devote special attention to facial expressions, hand and foot movements, and posture and vocalizations to uncover what is not spoken in words. The distinctions between communicative, indicative, and instrumental nonverbal behaviors are important when designing nonverbal research and examining the results of reported research. A primary difference between these actions is conscious intent. Communicative and instrumental actions are generally intentional. In contrast, indicative actions provide the if, when, and how communicative or instrumental actions are performed. As discussed later, these indicative behaviors may or may not be performed with conscious intent. For example,

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Foreword

upon waking from a night’s sleep, whether one first walks to the bathroom or to the kitchen is indicative of which need is most urgent. Likewise, the speed of pace to one’s destination is indicative of urgency. In other words, the if, when, and how of early morning instrumental actions carry indicative information. Although such mundane actions are useful for illustrating the conceptualization of nonverbal behavior, they are rarely, if ever, the focus of scientific study. Communicative acts range from highly ritualized behaviors (e.g., Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013) to unique improvisations. The taxonomy of hand movements during interaction offered by Ekman and Friesen (1972) applies equally to facial actions and vocal behavior and, to a limited degree, to leg and foot movements and posture. Actions in these modalities may emphasize or illustrate speech as well as substitute for words. Likewise, these modalities can be used to regulate the back-and-forth flow of speaker turns in face-to-face interaction. Which modality is used for communicative action is largely dependent on context, in particular, the accessibility of the recipient’s senses, and the expectation of the recipient’s ability to decode the message. Indicative acts potentially reveal inner emotional or attitudinal states and can be expressed through these modalities: facial expressions; head and eye positions and movements; hand, arm, leg, and foot positions and movements; torso posture; and the vocal modulation of speech (see Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15, this handbook). It is important to note that these modalities involve muscles that may be innervated without the actor’s intent yet may also be controlled intentionally and deliberately by the sender to communicate an accurate or deceptive message. Thus, what is observed in another’s nonverbal behavior may indicate an unspoken inner state or may communicate the sender’s intended performance in much the same manner as the spoken word. In general, as receivers, past knowledge of the sender or of the current context facilitates determination of the sender’s intent. Physical characteristics are relatively static and free of intentionality but, nevertheless, create impressions for the viewer that may or may not be accurate. Throughout a lifetime, maturation and aging alter physical appearance, sometimes dramatically. Dyes, makeup, facial hair, manner of dress, and even cosmetic surgery may alter appearance. Physical characteristics of gender, race, or ethnicity are the core of bigotry, intolerance, and misguided expectations. When designing nonverbal research or interpreting findings, the degree to which such beliefs are shared in a study group must be anticipated, and the generalization of research findings must be limited accordingly. Unfortunately, shared beliefs about how physical characteristics are indicative of the personality or character of an individual may influence the perceptions of nonverbal behaviors in ways that are not anticipated by the researcher. This is particularly problematic in studies that rely exclusively on the judgments of observers to determine the meaning of nonverbal behaviors. Collective wisdom about nonverbal behavior took large steps with the writings of Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century (see also Chapter 3, this handbook, on evolution). Whereas Darwin (1872) specifically described the facial expressions of six innate, basic emotions and how facial expressions of emotion evolved from functional, survival actions of the facial muscles, Freud was less specific, but equally inspiring, in finding repressed and suppressed inner states oozing from every pore of the body (Freud & Riviere, 1935). When a specific nonverbal behavior is observed as indicative of an internal state, there is a temptation to assign concrete meaning and apply that meaning across persons and contexts. However, such generalizations rarely stand the test of scientific investigation. As with most categorical distinctions, the xiv

Foreword

boundaries between indicative, communicative, and instrumental nonverbal actions are often blurred. During the 20th century, perhaps the most astute observers of nonverbal behaviors and how they are interpreted have been drama coaches, theater directors, movie producers, and directors. In theater, attention to what is communicated about an attitude, emotion, or intention evolved as the audience was brought closer to the actor through advances in the recording of sound and visual images. Improved technology created the need for actions to become increasingly accessible and refined. Early theater actors exaggerated nonverbal behaviors to communicate to a distant audience. Early movies built upon these exaggerations to convey emotions, attitudes, and intentions until the actors could be brought closer to the audience and the spoken word could be recorded and synchronized with nonverbal actions. Increasingly, it became the task of the drama coach and movie director to attend to what nonverbal behaviors communicated specific messages and to demand of their actors that these actions be accurately performed and coordinated with what was said. Actors were trained to simulate the spontaneous, indicative nonverbal behaviors that conveyed emotions as well as confidence, timidity, honesty, and deceptiveness. Actors whose stature and physiognomy conveyed particular nonverbal messages were often selected for roles when these traits were advantageous. Taking their cue from Hollywood and Broadway, politicians, business leaders, and other public figures sought training from coaches whose astute observations and teaching techniques would allow them to convey a desired image and to avoid unintentionally revealing their actual intentions, beliefs, and attitudes when this disclosure was disadvantageous to them. The scientific study of nonverbal behavior progressed as the recording and preservation of visual and auditory evidence became accessible and as techniques were developed for objectively and comprehensively measuring facial behavior (Facial Action Coding System; see Ekman & Friesen, 1978) and later other behavioral channels (see also Chapter 17, this handbook, on facial measurement). Although there has been progress, comparable comprehensive measurement technology is available for measuring the vocal characteristics of fundamental pitch, pitch variability, and speed of speech, but measurement tools are needed for the actions and positions of the hands, feet, legs, and torso (see also Chapters 18 and 22, this handbook). Moreover, these measurement tools need to examine how age, gender, and race may alter veridical measurement. Despite advances in technology and measurement, human beings still must detect nuances in nonverbal behavior and then derive the meaning and messages (or both) from those behaviors. This process is fraught with imagined meanings of messages, actual meanings of messages, or some combination therein. The field of nonverbal communication still suffers from these interpretational issues. A lesson on the importance of the observations, understanding, and interpretation of nonverbal behavior was quite unexpectedly offered to one of the authors by a nonhuman species whose communication skills turned out to be surprisingly refined. The lessons of this encounter offer examples of the variety of information from nonverbal actions that are possible when verbal exchange is not possible and the desire to communicate is strong. THE SPARROW AND HIS LESSONS IN NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION When checking one of our backyard fountains, I spotted a sparrow floating in the black water of the catchment pool, opening and closing his yellow beak, silently screaming for xv

Foreword

help. Quickly, I picked him up and while stroking his head and back carried him to a sunny area of the patio while blowing on him to dry his feathers. Realizing that blowing on his soaked feathers would not dry him quickly enough to save his life, I put him on a patio bench and told him to stay there while I went for a hair dryer. After making certain the dryer was blowing only warm and not hot air, I directed the air on his head, back, sides, and underside. After a while, he listed to one side. Alarmed that he was losing his strength and would die, I gently stroked his head and back and quietly spoke words of encouragement. He responded by lifting the wing opposite to the direction of his leaning, allowing me to direct the air to the underside of his wing and the exposed side of his body. Any doubt about his intent was removed when he shifted his weight to the other side and lifted his other wing so that I could dry the underside of the other wing. After 20 to 30 min, he began fluttering his wings, so I carried him to the bush where the flock of birds roost and placed him on a limb in the sun, instructing him to stay there and rest for a while. Stroking his head and back, I assured him that he would be okay. When checking the bush, after 10 min or so he was still on the limb in the sun, but later he had moved into the thicket out of sight. That evening as I sat on the patio where I could see the fountain where the sparrow had almost drowned, a sparrow flew toward me then changed direction and flew to the edge of the catchment pool. Standing on the edge of the pool he rapidly nodded his head six to eight times in the direction of the exact spot where I had rescued him from the water. He then flew to the top of the fountain, then to the bush, 25 ft away. During hours of watching birds, I had never before observed that many rapid head bobs, much less head bobs directed at anything other than food. I integrated the unusual actions of the sparrow with previous information and understood the sparrow’s intended message to be as follows: “I’m the sparrow you rescued from this water, thank you, and I am okay.” First, the sparrow made certain that I could see the actions of his message and took a flight path that caught my attention, then he combined the most basic components of nonverbal messages—getting the other’s attention, pointing (head bobs directed at the area of focus; “I’m the bird you rescued from this place”), and instrumental actions (flying; “I’m okay”). Although he did not use the basic component of vocalizing, his initial flight path from the bush to the fountain’s edge was sufficient to get my attention. At other times, birds have flown from the bushes to the fountain for a drink of water, but his path was directly toward me before veering sharply off toward the fountain. While I was drying my sparrow, he used instrumental actions and nonaction to convey that he understood my intent and trusted my actions. He made no attempt to leave the bench during the several minutes it took to go into the house for the hair dryer, and the noise from the hair dryer did not cause him to move away. He understood that drying only the top of his wings and body was insufficient for him to fly again and that I would understand if he lifted his wings. Most important of all, seeing me he used the only modality (his beak) to get my attention. Also, he trusted my holding and stroking him—understanding my intent to help, not hurt. This alone is remarkable, as it is unlikely that he had ever been touched by a human prior to being lifted from the water. For the next two evenings, two sparrows flew from the bushes to a small tree near where I was sitting and for several minutes sang a duet. In all the hours I have spent watching the birds at the distant feeders, no bird had come to that tree for more than a few seconds, and none had ever made a sound prior to these evening performances. In the context of the previous improvised communicative actions, the duet seemed to be a song of thanks from my sparrow and from one of his friends who he must have told it was safe to be as close as the xvi

Foreword

small tree and to stay a few minutes while joining him in song. I have no way to distinguish one sparrow from the flock that eats at the feeders, and I have no idea how they communicate with each other. However, the uniqueness of my sparrow’s actions in the unique context of the rescue leaves little doubt for me that my sparrow intended to communicate with me and did so successfully. HOW THE SPARROW CAN INFORM THEORY AND RESEARCH IN NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Before dismissing this story of the sparrow as an anthropomorphic fable, let’s look at what we can learn from it. My sparrow offered two possible lessons: First, conceptualizing emotion as simply fight and flight is too simplistic for even the common sparrow, and, second, communication is important, whether or not essential for survival, and can be accomplished nonverbally with great success. This capacity of the bird is supported by a 10-year study of the bird brain in which more similarities than differences were found between the bird and the mammalian and human brains (Chen, Winkler, Pfenning, & Jarvis, 2013; Jarvis et al., 2013; Karten et al., 2013; Montiel & Molnár, 2013). Not only is it clear that a bird has the capacity of the oversimplified flight/fight concept of emotion but the recent evidence strongly suggests that a bird’s brain has the capacity for much higher functions, such as discerning the difference between a threat and help situation. Regardless of the bird’s capacity or intent to communicate, we remain confronted with the veridicality of our interpretation of the sparrow’s behavior. This is a problem with human nonverbal behaviors when a study relies exclusively on the perceivers’ interpretations and remains regardless of the sample size of the perceivers. Large groups share misconceptions and myths about physical characteristics of a sender and possibly even his or her nonverbal actions. With the coaches and directors of a performance, the popular acceptance of the performance might be used to confirm the director’s accuracy about the nonverbal behaviors. However, the popular acceptance of the performance may be due more to the plot than the embedded nonverbal performance, and the director’s claims of expertise may be unwarranted. The stream of nonverbal behaviors is rapid, with each event often occurring in mere seconds and creating a microcontext for succeeding events. The perceptions of the receiver(s) do not measure the nonverbal behaviors but merely reflect the understanding of the perceiver. Unfortunately, the internal context or subjective consciousness of perceivers that influence understanding is currently not measurable beyond self-report, which is the most unreliable of the semireliable means to measure such things. The same is the case for the sender. The lack of reliability of self-report has made introspection a limited source of data. A lack of reliability is inevitable, as the task of reporting one’s internal status in retrospect is a context that cannot be duplicated when asked to repeat the self-report at another time or place. Nevertheless, for the scientific study of nonverbal behaviors, such as emotion-related responses to external stimuli, it is probably beneficial to return to the advice of the founders of psychology and to use trained introspection as reputable data. In this manner, it may be possible to come closer to understanding the internal psychological status of both sender and receiver when studying nonverbal communication. This technique, of course, has its advantages and disadvantages. We may gain better insight into humans, but we may also end up with no reliable scientific means to verify that insight. Thus, it is important, despite our technological and methodological advances, not to lose sight of our common humanity and the essence of any given human being as exposed by his xvii

Foreword

or her nonverbal communication. One of the earliest lessons in our study of psychology was the difference between reliability and validity, yet a lack of reliability has been used to reject the potential validity of data that might prove valuable. Finding the conceptual level that balances validity and reliability of self-report remains one of the most challenging issues for future studies of nonverbal behavior. Fortunately, psychology has solved similar issues that involved complex human behavior. Yet, this issue cannot be solved if attempts are automatically rejected on the basis of earlier attempts that failed to find reliability or if there is only curiosity about the subjective consciousness when an individual exhibits psychopathology or criminal behavior. With millions of people having ready access to the recording of human behavior in natural contexts, there will be a wealth of recorded behavior, and automation for the measuring of behavior will help define the variety and limits of nonverbal behaviors. In the not too distant future, there will be opportunities to use what is learned from this handbook to study spontaneous nonverbal behavior in contexts not previously accessible. We hope that preconceived assumptions will not prevent the exploration of the inner workings of the minds of those whose nonverbal actions are studied and for those who react to the behaviors they see and hear. Wallace V. Friesen and Deborah D. Danner

References Chen, C.-C., Winkler, C. M., Pfenning, A. R., & Jarvis, E. D. (2013). Molecular profiling of the developing avian telencephalon: Regional timing and brain subdivision continuities. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 521, 3666–3701. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cne.23406 Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of emotion in man and animals. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1972). Hand movements. Journal of Communication, 22, 353–374. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1972.tb00163.x Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1978). Facial Action Coding System: Investigator’s guide. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Freud, S., & Riviere, J. (1935). A general introduction to psycho-analysis: A course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of Vienna. New York, NY: Liveright. Jarvis, E. D., Yu, J., Rivas, M. V., Horita, H., Feenders, G., Whitney, O., ... Wada, K. (2013). Global view of the functional molecular organization of the avian cerebrum: Mirror images and functional columns. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 521, 3614–3665. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ cne.23404 Karten, H. J., Brzozowska-Prechtl, A., Lovell, P. V., Tang, D. D., Mello, C. V., Wang, H., & Mitra, P. P. (2013). Digital atlas of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) brain: A high-resolution photo atlas. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 521, 3702–3715. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cne.23443 Matsumoto, D., & Hwang, H. C. (2013). Cultural similarities and differences in emblematic gestures. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 37, 1–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0143-8 Montiel, J. F., & Molnár, Z. (2013). The impact of gene expression analysis on evolving views of avian brain organization. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 521, 3604–3613. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ cne.23403

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Introduction

Nonverbal communication (NVC) has been referred to by many labels in the past, one of the most popular of which is body language, a term that has been widespread since the publication of Julius Fast’s (1970) book of the same name years ago. Researchers, however, have defined NVC differently, embracing the idea that NVC encompasses almost all of human communication except the spoken or written word (Knapp, 1972). In this handbook, we define NVC as the transfer and exchange of messages in any and all modalities that do not involve words. As such, NVC refers to a broad array of channels, sources, and messages that inform and influence the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of others. Two important ways of understanding NVC—and that frame how we approached structuring this handbook—concern knowing the sources of the different types of messages that can be communicated nonverbally and understanding the functions of those messages. We describe these next and refer back to them later when discussing the organization and structure of this handbook. THE SOURCES OF Nonverbal communication Although there are many ways of categorizing the multiple sources of messages that compose NVC, we broadly arrange them into three categories. One source of messages is the environment or context. Nonverbal messages communicated by an environment can help guide the behaviors that occur within that environment. For example, different places send different messages about their occupants and about what kinds of behaviors are appropriate. This is accomplished through the use of color, lighting, heat, fabric textures, photographs, type of furniture, layout, and so forth. The effects of these aspects of the environmental context can be seen in houses, restaurants, churches, casinos, and all other kinds of personmade enclosures. Fast-food restaurants use active, bright colors—such as orange, yellow, and red—in a well-lit environment with hard plastic seating, sending subtle messages that urge diners to eat more food more quickly and not to lounge around too much afterward. In contrast, fine-dining restaurants use dimmer lighting, softer and darker colors, and more comfortable chairs to give a more intimate impression, subtly urging diners to feel comfortable and stay around for dessert and coffee. Designers of gambling casinos also know well about the power of creating an environment to send a message; there is a reason why casinos are usually dark, with lots of colorful lights, ringing sounds, and no clocks: Patrons can just lose themselves and their sense of time and stay as long as possible. Not surprisingly, people

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can make relatively accurate judgments of the occupants’ personalities just by viewing a room (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002). Much of the existing knowledge in this area is reviewed in Chapter 9 of this handbook. Another source of nonverbal messages is one’s physical characteristics or appearance. These refer to the static physical appearance or smell of a person, including one’s height and weight; skin color; hair; eyebrows; cheeks; chin; proportion of eye, nose, and chin size; as well as odors. For years, within this framework, psychologists and laypersons alike believed that different body types were predictive of personality, despite the lack of reliable scientific or empirical evidence. On the basis of social Darwinism, for example, different body types denoted different types of personalities: endomorphs (heavier, obese, rounder, softer looking) were sociable and pleasant, mesomorphs (angular, muscular, harder looking) were leaders and strong-willed, and ectomorphs (thin, frail, brittle looking) were withdrawn, smart, and nervous (Sheldon, 1940). Even today, mass media capitalize on this perceived linkage by casting actors, news anchors, and so on accordingly. One physical characteristic that has received considerable attention is the face, and studies in this area have examined the relationship between facial structure or physiognomy (as opposed to facial expressions, which are produced by movements of the facial muscles) and judgments of personal characteristics. Chinese face reading, for example, is based on observations of the structure of a person’s face. The Chinese are not the only ones to do this: In the late 1800s, Europeans believed that they could characterize criminal personalities on the basis of the heaviness of one’s eyebrows and jaw (Gould, 1981), although there is no evidence that one can accurately identify criminals by their facial appearance. Research in the 1980s found that adult humans who have more “baby faces”—a higher forehead, proportionally larger eyes, and smaller nose—are seen as more naive and honest, and they are less likely to be picked as leaders (Berry & McArthur, 1986). Since that time, much research has been conducted, and this is reviewed in Chapter 9 of this handbook. Another physical characteristic that has received increasing research attention is odor. Odors also send messages, both at a conscious and unconscious level. At a conscious level, perfumes, aftershaves, and body odor send messages about hygiene in North America, although such messages are not so clear in other cultures. At a nonconscious level, humans send pheromones that, when placed under the nose of a woman or man, send signals of greater attractiveness and appeal. Infants can also recognize the smell of their mothers and will show strong preferences for items that smell of mom. Many adults will also note how they are comforted by the smell of loved ones (reviewed in Knapp & Hall, 2006). Much of the research in this area is reviewed in Chapter 14 of this handbook. Physical appearance clues also include what are termed artifactual clues, such as jewelry, clothes, glasses, and so forth. People wearing glasses are seen as being smarter. Jewelry sends messages about one’s socioeconomic or marital status. For example, North Americans signal their married status by wearing a ring on their left “ring” finger, whereas Europeans often wear this signal on the right ring finger. Clothing also sends messages about income, group membership, and even respect for others. At a formal event, most people would judge a person who wears a t-shirt and jeans differently than a person who wears a suit. A third source of NVC occurs in the dynamic actions of the face, voice, and body. These are known as nonverbal behaviors (NVBs) and include the behaviors that occur during communication or interaction episodes that do not include verbal language. Messages are transmitted through multiple nonverbal channels, which include facial expressions, voice, gestures, body postures, interpersonal distance, touching, and gaze. We call these channels xx

Introduction

because, like channels on a television, they are each capable of sending their own distinct message. Biology, learning, and culture all influence these actions, which is why we commissioned chapters on evolution, culture, and development (see Chapters 3, 4, and 5, this handbook). Conceptually, NVC and NVB are often confused with each other, and researchers and laypersons often use the terms interchangeably. We consider NVC to be a broader category than NVB, encompassing the way one dresses, the placement of one’s office within a larger building, the use of time, the sweat stains in one’s armpits, the distance people stand when they converse, or the design and arrangement of one’s room (Henley, 1977). In contrast, NVB is a subcategory of NVC and refers more specifically to the dynamic actions and behaviors that occur when people are interacting with one another or with the environment. THE FUNCTIONS OF Nonverbal communication There are many ways of understanding and classifying the various functions of NVC; in this handbook, we do so in four ways: First, NVC can define communication by providing the backdrop for communication and by explaining or characterizing the context or setting within which people will interact and behave. For instance, a quiet, dimly lit room suggests to people that interactions should be subdued (church, mosque, temple). Brightly lit rooms, with active colors such as yellow and orange, communicate active, upbeat activities. Second, NVC can comment on verbal communication—that is, the actual words used—because NVB can occur when people are also talking. NVB can supplement information missing in the words, complement the information in the words, qualify the verbal information, or contradict the verbal information. Each of these different verbal–nonverbal combinations has different implications for what is going on in the communicator’s mind. These various combinations make communication not only interesting but also complex. Third, NVC can regulate our interaction episodes. Much of our conversations are regulated by nonverbal cues so subtle that the average person does not notice them. Nodding, smiling, looking concerned or empathetic are all NVBs that occur during conversations and signal to the talker that the listener is listening and tracking the conversation. The “umms,” “ahhs,” and other nonverbal signals that occur during conversations are called back channel communication because they are not the main focus of communication; instead, they function at the periphery of communication. Turn-taking is regulated by NVBs: When people finish talking, they drop their voice tone and dynamics to let the listener know they have been given the floor. Finally, NVC can be the message itself because it can occur without any words being spoken simultaneously. A smile often indicates joy, pleasantness, or politeness. A frown indicates unhappiness. A wave of the hand signifies “goodbye.” Raising your index finger to your lips signifies “shhh” or “be quiet.” None of these actions require any words, thus highlighting one of the important functions of NVC. Understanding the functions of NVC requires one to consider the function of communication itself. We believe that the function of communication is to allow for the sharing of social intentions, which facilitates social coordination. The overall function of NVC, therefore, is to facilitate this overall purpose of communication—to assist in the sharing of social intentions and to facilitate social coordination. NVC is phylogenetically older than verbal communication (see Chapter 3, this handbook) and fulfills this function in many animal xxi

Introduction

species. For this reason, it plays a crucial role in the maintenance of any society and culture (see Chapters 4 and 16, this handbook). OVERVIEW AND ORGANIZATION OF THIS HANDBOOK Scholars have long acknowledged the crucial importance of NVC and NVB, and they have long been topics of scientific inquiry and writing. Over the past few decades, there have been scores of studies on the sources and functions of NVC and NVB, and in many different contexts. Correspondingly, several scholarly titles on NVC and NVB have appeared over the years, including a few handbooks published by notable publishers. These handbooks have covered topics such as research methodologies in studying NVC/NVB, theoretical foundations of NVC/NVB, the factors of influence and the functions of NVC/NVB, and the various contexts and consequences in which NVC and NVB occur. Thus, there is a need and a place for state-of-the-art, scholarly presentations, reviews, and theories of the research world of NVC and NVB. Studies in this area are booming, and new and improved technologies that allow for the recording, capture, and analysis of behaviors continually push the field into new findings and new directions. For that reason, the American Psychological Association (APA) commissioned us to produce this handbook, a project on which we gladly and wholeheartedly embarked. Such an endeavor cannot occur without much thought and planning. Our first and foremost consideration was our intended audience. Without a doubt, we have organized this handbook as an academically based, scholarly work, whose primary audience is researchers specializing in this area. As such, we anticipate that the work can and should be used as a primary resource by fellow researchers as well as in graduate-level classes on NVC or NVB. Given that audience, we then considered what would be the most compelling and important information for that audience to have. The answer to that question was previewed earlier. We felt that the most crucial information for scholars to have in a reference book would be material that explored the sources of NVC messages as well as the functions of those messages in depth. As a scholarly reference for researchers, we wanted the book to have more than a cursory coverage of the ever-evolving research methodologies associated with the study of NVC and NVB. Moreover, we wanted researchers to have a good idea of the history of research in this area to pay respect and homage to the pioneers in the area and their works. Unfortunately, the political climate of today’s psychological sciences often encourages contemporary researchers to forget our history and to ignore the vast literatures that preceded us. We wanted to take steps to correct that. Thus, we organized this handbook around four broad themes, each of which led to a different section in this handbook. The first concerns the history of the field: Overview and History, which includes two chapters providing an overview and history of the area, written by very senior researchers (Valerie Manusov and Caroline F. Keating) with many years of experience. Indeed, it was an honor to have the contribution of these senior researchers and pioneers to delineate the background of the field of NVC. The second theme that we considered concerns the factors of influence of NVC and NVB. The study of NVC and NVB has encompassed and affected many different theoretical and foundational perspectives in psychology, and it is impossible today to understand the import of NVC and NVB fully without equally acknowledging and comprehending the vast theoretical and conceptual frameworks within which it occurs. For that reason, we present xxii

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five chapters in Part II, Factors of Influence, that discuss the important roles of evolution and phylogeny (Chapter 3), culture (Chapter 4), development and ontogeny (Chapter 5), gender (Chapter 6), and personality (Chapter 7). All of the chapter authors were asked to provide a broad theoretical and conceptual framework to understand how each of their respective topics influenced, and is influenced by, NVC and NVB. The third theme that we considered concerns the separate sources of NVC and NVB that have been studied in the past. Given our understanding of the three sources of messages concerning NVC described earlier, in Part III, Sources of Messages, we included a chapter on the physical environment (Chapter 8), a chapter on appearance and physiognomy (Chapter 9), and a chapter on olfactics and odor (Chapter 14). We also included chapters on each of the specific NVB channels for which there was a sufficient body of research from which to provide state-of-the-art reviews. These include reviews of facial expressions (Chapter 10), voice (Chapter 11), gesture (Chapter 12), and eye behavior and gaze (Chapter 13). We condensed research on postures, gait, proxemics, and haptics into one chapter on the body (Chapter 15). We are particularly excited to include a chapter on NVC in nonhuman primates, a burgeoning area of research (Chapter 16). All of the chapter authors were asked to provide a state-ofthe-art review of the main findings in the scholarly literatures in their areas as well as a roadmap for future research that would overcome current empirical or theoretical limitations. Finally, given our intended audience of researchers, we would be remiss without having a section on methodology. We did not, however, want to give only superficial coverage to methods by including only a single chapter. For that reason, in Part IV, Methodology, we present seven chapters on research methods that are specific to the various channels of NVB covered in Part III. Here, readers will find chapters describing methods for measuring and analyzing facial expressions (Chapter 17), the voice (Chapter 18), gesture (Chapter 19), eye behavior (Chapter 20), olfactics (Chapter 21), body movement (Chapter 22), and nonverbal sensitivity (Chapter 23). These chapter authors were asked not only to provide measurement and analysis overviews and guidelines for researchers in these areas but also to review the state-of-the-art technologies that may currently exist that allow for recording or analysis of each of the various channels of behavior. What readers will not find in this coverage are the important studies in various different contexts in which NVC and NVB occur, such as within dyads, relationships, marriages, health care settings, education, the workplace and organizations, and the like. They will also not find chapters that focus exclusively on specific applications of NVC and NVB, such as rapport building, therapist–client interactions, or deception. Their noninclusion does not indicate that we think that these areas of study are not important in their own right. They are certainly important. We did, however, decide that the material described earlier was necessary and sufficient to form the contents of a foundational work on NVC in the APA Handbooks in Psychology® series, and for that reason we limited ourselves to that selection. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are so many people who made this handbook possible and to whom we want to offer our thanks. First, we would like to extend our deep appreciation and gratitude to the contributors, who gave their time and effort to provide us with chapters. Their expertise gave this book a special meaning that readers will not find anywhere else, and the authors all went above and beyond the call of duty not only in drafting their chapters but in working with us through a very detailed editing process that required sometimes multiple revisions to get to xxiii

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the best format for readers to enjoy and from which to benefit most. We truly hope that the readers of this handbook will recognize the great insights and experiences that the authors bring to the work and that they will be inspired to do better science in the future. We are confident that the content reported here cannot be found anywhere else in a single volume. We also would like to thank all of the staff at APA. Lisa Corry has been a gem throughout the entire process, keeping all of us—editors and chapter authors alike—in line with her amazing project-coordination skills. APA Books Director of Reference, Ted Baroody, has provided useful guidance in all aspects of the project, and he has been an invaluable resource to us throughout the entire project. We also appreciate the support of our acquisitions editor, Maureen Adams, as well as the APA production staff, especially Anna Reinhart, our production editor. Although there are many people in our lives who have contributed to the creation of our ideas and the conduct of our research—and so many who have contributed to the planning, writing, production, and distribution of this handbook—any mistakes that are in it are ours and only ours. David Matsumoto, Hyisung C. Hwang, and Mark G. Frank Editors-in-Chief

References Berry, D. S., & McArthur, L. Z. (1986). Perceiving character in faces: The impact of age-related craniofacial changes on social perception. Psychological Bulletin, 100, 3–18. http://dx.doi. org/10.1037/0033-2909.100.1.3 Fast, J. (1970). Body language. New York, NY: M. Evans. Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 379–398. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.3.379 Gould, S. J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York, NY: Norton. Henley, N. M. (1977). Body politics: Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Knapp, M. L. (1972). Nonverbal communication in human interaction. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Knapp, M. L., & Hall, J. A. (2006). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (6th ed.). New York, NY: Harcourt Brace. Sheldon, W. H. (1940). The varieties of human physique: An introduction to constitutional psychology. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.

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Part I

Overview and History

Chapter 1

A History of Research on Nonverbal Communication: Our Divergent Pasts and Their Contemporary Legacies Valerie Manusov

We are fortunate as nonverbal communication scholars to be a part of a truly interdisciplinary endeavor. Whereas most contemporary researchers contributing to our large and diverse area have their disciplinary homes in psychology and communication, others whose work informs the study of nonverbal communication come from fields that range from anthropology to zoology. This set of traditions provides rich and fertile soil for the growth of our understanding of what nonverbal communication is, what it does, where it originates, how it unfolds, and what it affects. It also means that a “history” of our work has many different origins and often divergent—even competing—answers to some fundamental questions. In this chapter, I work to paint a picture of this set of histories, or what I call heritages, emphasizing those scholars who have played a particularly important role in shaping our research traditions and illuminating some of the creativity and controversies that have arisen based, in part at least, on the myriad places from which we have come. Reading across the other chapters in this handbook provides additional evidence for the many origins of our work. To help structure these ideas, however, I offer a set of categories for this chapter that allows me to discuss these diverse histories—and what I see to be some of the legacies of these traditions—in a focused way. I label these our rhetorical, linguistic, sociological, cultural, ethological, and psychological heritages. Some of these are tied to the intellectual fields for which they are named; others span

disciplines. All, however, can be used by scholars across areas to better understand who we are, where we came from, and to what effect. Other writers may well have created different labels or an organization that frames our field in a way other than what I have here. Moreover, the categories I suggest should not be seen as mutually exclusive; they, like our history from where they emerge, are messier and have more crossover than they may seem at first. Nonetheless, I believe what follows offers a useful perspective on from where contemporary work emerged and who we are now as scholars interested in nonverbal means of communicating. It also provides a way of understanding—and respecting—the places where our ideas converge and where they diverge. Moreover, my aim is to show that each of these traditions provides only part of the overall picture that is the nonverbal communication system and that reading broadly and openly will further our sensitivity to the value of nonverbal communication and its study. RHETORICAL HERITAGE Mark L. Knapp, in his 2006 chapter that also provides a history of research in our area, has asserted that people have been “researching” nonverbal cues since the dawn of time. The movements that we make with our bodies, the expressions on our faces, the clothes that we wear, and the smells that we prefer have long made an impression on people—artists, writers, philosophers, and

The author wishes to thank her colleagues Leah Ceccarelli and Christine Harold for their advice on the rhetoric citations. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-001 APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, D. Matsumoto, H. C. Hwang, and M. G. Frank (Editors-in-Chief) Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

Valerie Manusov

politicians—who seek to understand—and in some cases manipulate—human behavior. More focused scholarly discussion of nonverbal cues is attributed at around the same time to Confucius in the East and Aristotle in the West, with the latter expounding on the importance of what we now call nonverbal cues as foundational to the canon of delivery. Knapp (2006) has argued, however, that “it was the Roman orators and teachers who [first] refined, clarified, categorized, and expanded on” nonverbal behaviors (p. 4) in a quest to make oration a more persuasive and, for some at least, a more ethical practice. In addition to categorizing nonverbal cues that were part of oration, this early tradition, what I am calling part of our field’s rhetorical heritage, made claims about what “good” (i.e., proper, appropriate, persuasive) nonverbal cues used during public speech should look or sound like. Many of these propositions centered on the importance of consistency; that is, nonverbal cues should be used in a way that, using Quintilian’s (90 CE/1922) words, must be “harmonious” (i.e., go together or be congruent with the other cues occurring with them) to be effective. This set of claims, along with the elocutionists who followed starting in the mid-1700s, put in place several paths that have been followed since by many who seek to understand the nonverbal communication system. For example, it tied nonverbal communication to language inherently, often in what may appear to be a subordinate position. Centuries later, Paul Ekman (1965), in his foundational model of nonverbal communication, described nonverbal cues as they function in relation to what is said and in a way that reinforced, even if unwittingly, the rhetors’ assumptions of its status vis-à-vis language. Ekman argued that there are six ways in which nonverbal cues interact with spoken words: In our interactions, nonverbal communication may repeat, conflict with, complement, substitute for, accent or moderate, and regulate what is said. This set of categories has been repeated—usually in an overly simplistic way inconsistent with the complexity that Ekman initially provided—in almost every general discussion of what nonverbal cues are and how they work, perpetuating the belief that nonverbal cues are important, largely in their relationship with 4

language. Indeed, in many texts on interpersonal communication, for instance, Ekman’s categorization is used to define nonverbal communication and how it functions. For those readers, then, nonverbal communication is important only in how it works alongside language. On the other hand, the view that nonverbal cues are—often at least—tied inherently to language is the precursor to some very important research looking more closely at this integration. Much of this work centers on the careful analysis of the coordination of gestures and facial expressions into speech acts and references the cues as one larger system, not as verbal and nonverbal behavior (e.g., Kendon, 1985; McNeill, 1985; see also Chapter 12, this handbook). For Bavelas and Chovil (2006), the systematic study of the interplay of interaction behaviors began in the 1950s (see the Linguistic Heritage and Sociological Heritage sections of this chapter). They noted that scholars have offered many labels for the integration of interaction cues, such as mixed syntax, comprehensive communication act, multichannel process, composite signal, integrated message, and multimodal communication. Others p refer to call the whole system of interconnected cues “language” rather than make what they argue are erroneous distinctions between verbal and nonverbal behavior (see, e.g., Streeck & Knapp, 2002). The legacy just discussed—tying together all forms of communication—is not seen typically as an ancestor of rhetorical traditions. However, contemporary rhetorical work has a direct lineage to this heritage. Whereas rhetoricians study language use (in its more traditional sense) most commonly, particularly as a means for persuasion, some focus their interpretive lens on nonverbal cues. The subfield of visual rhetoric, for instance, centers on the interpretation and critique of images (see, e.g., Edwards & Winkler, 1997). Material rhetoric is even more closely aligned to nonverbal cues in that it reflects on the signification of material things, such as the use of space, structure, and environment as consequential modes of communication. Carole Blair is perhaps most well-known for her work in this area, specifically that which centers on the meanings in and around public memorials (e.g., Blair, Balthrop, & Michel, 2011; Blair, Dickinson, & Ott, 2010).

A History of Research on Nonverbal Communication

Other rhetoricians focus on the human body as a communicative vehicle. In her book, Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language, Hawhee (2009) has revealed many of the ways in which Burke, one of the best known contemporary rhetoricians, portrayed rhetoric as more than studying language form and features but, rather, as symbolic action. In particular, Burke looked to the body, its appearance and its movements, as what he called a “somatic” (physical, body-based) line of inquiry with tremendous representational and transformational value. That is, without anything being said, a person’s physical form and action have poignant meaning value for the person, those who engage with him or her, and the larger cultural world in which that body is embedded. For example, Burke (like Erving Goffman in his 1963 work, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity) explored the ways in which body anomalies or “deviance” becomes part of—and creates challenges to—our symbol system. In his book, About Face, for instance, Cole (1999) has provided examples of people who have lost the ability to move their faces or who have facial deformities that affect how “human” others think they are. Others, such as Selzer and Crowley (1999), have likewise put their focus on bodies, their movements, and talk about body as part of body rhetoric. Bixler (2010), as an exemplar, did an in-depth study of breast cancer walks and the ways in which moving their body—rather than just giving money—became an important symbolic activity for the walkers, providing greater participative understanding of the journey that those with breast cancers undertake. Together, this heritage reaches back into antiquity to highlight the recognition of nonverbal means of communicating as part of a larger set of actions. For some, this set of actions was a speech, a rhetorical moment when a speaker worked to persuade his audience, and nonverbal cues were seen as essential to doing this well. The tie between language and nonverbal acts worked its way through time to those whose work looks not at nonverbal communication specifically but, rather, at larger communication systems, where myriad cues work together as people engage with one another. It has also encouraged scholars to focus on the rhetorical (persuasive)

value of nonverbal cues that are as diverse from one another as bodies and buildings. The result is an emphasis on the structure and function of nonverbal engagement. LINGUISTIC HERITAGE The focus on the communicative forms and processes of the body—or of being embodied—and the focus on structure have parallels in other traditions for the study of nonverbal communication. Particularly well-known among researchers of nonverbal communication and, in particular, the structure of nonverbal systems is Ray Birdwhistell, who, in 1970, published Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication. Birdwhistell opened his work by stating “these essays are based on the conviction that body motion is a learned form of communication, which is patterned within a culture and which can be broken down into an ordered system of isolable elements” (p. xi). Using a film repertoire, he and colleagues from a range of fields reviewed their data corpus, which ranged from a mother changing her baby’s diapers to a scene of a couple, where the woman lights and smokes her cigarette. From these in-depth observations, Birdwhistell proposed an elaborate set of categories that characterized the movements they witnessed, which he called kinesics. Just as is true with other heritages described in this chapter, Birdwhistell was affected by his assumption that certain communication systems are “language-like” and can be described by their units, their combined units, and the ways that they can be structured together with a particular syntax. Indeed, even the label kinesics suggests that body movements comprise a communicative code that can be studied, just as languages are studied within linguistics. However, for Birdwhistell (1970), meaning is created in more than an a priori way, suggested by models of what is “good” or “persuasive” inherently (p. 27), as early studies of oration dictated. Rather, it is understood within its context, and it is very much a social endeavor conducted, as Goffman (1959) also has contended, between people. Birdwhistell’s (1970) conception of nonverbal communication as an identifiable social action 5

Valerie Manusov

provided an important grounding for many more recent projects on nonverbal communication. One legacy of conceptualizing nonverbal cues as a structured and identifiable communication system is the creation of labels that mirror linguistics, such as calling touch cues haptics or tacesics or referencing the communicative features of time as chronemics, though Birdwhistell did not think that all behavior systems were equally complex and structured as is the body. Within this legacy, however, work by Edward T. Hall on proxemics, or the use of space as communication, is particularly germane (see also Chapter 15, this handbook). Like Goffman (1959, 1963), E. T. Hall (1977) relied on extensive observation to propose that the way we use our personal space and our territories—and how we come to interpret the meanings for these space uses—is part and parcel of the culture in which they occur. Whereas there is universality to the idea that space use is rule-governed and meaningful, the specific ways it becomes so and the forms that it takes vary across groups and cultures. These differences are often the source of cross-group or cross-cultural misunderstanding. Although not making the linguistics reference, Ekman also followed the premise that nonverbal cues are formed from identifiable units that, when combined, become socially meaningful. In 1978, Ekman and his collaborator Wallace V. Friesen created the Facial Action Coding System, an elaborate research tool that has been used for, among other things, making the distinction between the muscles used in felt (genuine) and false (artificial) smiles (see Ekman & Rosenberg, 1997, for a summary of many of the studies that used this methodology up until their publication date; see, also, Chapter 10, this handbook). Later, John M. Gottman and his colleagues (e.g., Gottman, McCoy, & Coan, 1996) built upon the Facial Action Coding System with their Specific Action Coding System and have used itsuccessfully, alongside other measures, across studies to help predict divorce. The linguistic heritage, then, helps the depth of our understanding about the complexity of the behavioral repertoires available to us as communicators and as scholars. Rather than the systematic connections or the means through which actions 6

become meaningful that are the legacies of our rhetorical heritage, this approach to the study of nonverbal cues shines its light on the bones and skeletons of our communicative systems. In doing so, it brings to our attention the complexity of the individual systems that make up the larger processes in which we engage. SOCIOLOGICAL HERITAGE The focus on the specific behaviors that make up nonverbal communicative systems works as a bridge to other research traditions important to our area. Albert Scheflen (1973, 1974), for example, provided some of the foundational work on nonverbal communication, also focusing initially on kinesics. Scheflen argued that, ironically, the introduction of kinesics as a language of the body was distorted elsewhere into the “study” of body language, with the assumption that one’s behaviors are a direct reflection of that person and/or his state of mind. For him, this psychologically oriented move was problematic (and it also belies the much more sophisticated work that has been done by psychologists, as will be seen). Scheflen’s grounding premise focused instead on social order and meaning and therefore helped forge what I call here the sociological heritage of nonverbal research (though he referenced it as a “communicational point of view”; Scheflen, 1973, p. xiii). Much of the work involving nonverbal communication stemming from a sociological tradition is, like the two heritages already identified, tied to language. Perhaps the most notable is the body of scholarship using conversation analysis, and here Ireturn to the discussion from the rhetorical heritage that does not delineate between separate verbal and nonverbal forms of communicating. Although conversation analysis is a method used first to study the structure and form of languagein-use (Schegloff, 1984; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), several conversation analysts have focused their lens on the study of nonverbal cues as they occur in everyday interaction with an emphasis on how the behaviors “act” in interaction and what they do for the interactants. Robinson (2006), for example, recognized “the inseparability of nonverbal and verbal

A History of Research on Nonverbal Communication

behavior” (p. 442) by showing the ways in which participants in doctor–patient interactions orient to one another through gaze and do so differently at the beginning, middle, and end of conversations. He argued that nonverbal cues are part of the “cause and effect” of interactions and can be understood best by observing carefully the sequence of behaviors as they unfold. The idea that nonverbal communication does things for us in interaction is also at the heart of Goffman’s work. A sociologist himself, he wrote prolifically and engagingly about an array of social customs. In Stigma, for instance, Goffman (1963) commented on the ways in which “problematic” bodies alter the social system and the forms of engagement within them. For instance, when we see a person whose leg has been amputated competing in a skiing competition, we are encouraged to alter our view about what counts as a “good” body. In doing so, Goffman’s analysis offered an important critical lens to our understanding of nonverbal cues, which has been picked up by some scholars (e.g., Coupland, 2003). More germane, perhaps, to the contemporary study of nonverbal communication, however, are Goffman’s (1959) ideas relayed in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In this book, Goffman has provided a view of the social world that furthered Mead’s (1934) introduction of social interactionism in Mind, Self, and Society (see also, Blumer, 1969). He argued, among other things, that people are meaning-making creatures who develop and alter their sense of themselves and the world through their engagements with others. Whereas Goffman (1959) discussed language, he also illustrated the salient role that nonverbal cues play by themselves in how we present ourselves and are confronted by others. In doing so, Goffman has brought our specific attention to the interactive functions that nonverbal cues may serve in our ongoing interactions. Whereas his focus in that treatise was on selfpresentation, other scholars have delineated a larger range of communicative functions served by nonverbal cues, reflecting even more the heurism of Goffman’s work. One of those functions, interaction management, can be seen in the conversation

analysis work (e.g., the gaze patterns of physicians and their patients) discussed earlier in this section; other scholars—such as Street and Cappella (1985); Bernieri and Rosenthal (1991); Giles, Coupland, and Coupland (1991)—have offered different forms of inquiry that help detail the ways in which interactants’ behaviors influence one another’s. For example, some of this work brings to life the interconnectedness between a mother’s vocal cues and her infant’s smiles and the ways in which gestures imply that one person cannot yet take the speaking floor from another. Such analyses suggest that scholarship often needs to center on what occurs between people, rather than only individually, to fully understand the nature of nonverbal communication in interaction. Another function, discussed most elaborately by Judee K. Burgoon, involves nonverbal cues that reflect for ourselves and others how interactants appraise the relationship between them, what Burgoon and Hale (1984) called relational messages (see also, Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999). Among other relational definitions, such messages comment on interactants’ intimacy (see Andersen, Guerrero, & Jones, 2006; Noller, 2006) or their power vis-à-vis one another (Burgoon & Dunbar, 2006). For many, the ability to be able to define, reflect, and sometimes change relationships via nonverbal means is one of the most powerful social capacities nonverbal cues carry (Docan-Morgan, Manusov, & Harvey, 2013). Additional vital functions that researchers have identified include deception, emotional expression, person perception, and persuasion (see Patterson, 1991, for more on the functional approach to nonverbal communication generally). Together, the sociological heritage offers us information about the social value of nonverbal means of communicating. It helps us understand what nonverbal means of communicating can do for us as communicators, how the cues “act,” and what those actions provide for us in our interactions. Scholars from this heritage also emphasize that we communicate nonverbally in tandem with our interaction partners such that each communicator’s behaviors affect and reflect what the other is doing, forming a kind of unique communication system between the interactants. 7

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CULTURAL HERITAGE As noted, Goffman did most of his research through observation of behaviors in their context, providing rich descriptions of what was occurring and giving commentary on what he observed. This form of analysis is consistent with ethnographic research, studies that are conducted in situ and allow for the naturalistic observation of behaviors as they unfold. Gerry Philipsen is credited with bringing the ethnographic form to the study of communication more specifically, and his work, like those who followed him, is referred to as the Ethnography of Communication and is a part of the cultural heritage of nonverbal communication scholarship (see Philipsen, 2009). This heritage, like the sociological heritage, focuses on the larger systems in which nonverbal cues are embedded (see also Chapter 4, this handbook). Following Dell Hymes and others, ethnographers who provide understanding about nonverbal cues do so with the assumption that communicative cues both reflect and affect culture. That is, nonverbal cues become meaningful within their larger cultural context, which typically is the communicative or speech community that uses—and makes meaning for—those cues. The community’s rules of use, their meanings, and changes that they undergo are part and parcel of the larger set of cultural norms and values held by the communicative community. Most specifically, studying nonverbal cues in their cultural contexts speaks to that culture and what it believes and finds important. Carbaugh, Berry, and Nurmikari-Berry (2006), for instance, have offered evidence of a Finnish cultural code that values silence so much so that it is considered, by those in the community, to be a “natural way of being.” Likewise, Levine (1997), using a different methodology but highlighting similar cultural links to nonverbal cues, showed the ways in which time is a culturally rule-governed system. The legacy of a cultural heritage includes studies that are more about cultural differences than the cultural way of communicating emphasized in the Ethnography of Communication. For instance, research that looks at how much touch one culture uses compared to another would fall within this 8

realm. Much of this comparative work can be traced to E. T. Hall, who, in 1959, published The Silent Language to engage his ideas around variance in nonverbal displays based in culture. In that book, and others (E. T. Hall, 1966, 1977), he referenced the idea of context as imperative for interpreting nonverbal cues (see also Chapters 4 and 16, this handbook). For E. T. Hall, this reference was used to delineate broad level differences between cultures, including the degree to which the members of a culture rely more or less on nonverbal cues in their interactions. Specifically, he noted that high-context cultures are particularly nonverbal in that less of their social meaning is encoded in what they say to one another. Cues available in the larger context, such as each interactant’s status, become a primary way of understanding behavior and determining what social actions are appropriate. Myriad studies have been produced to test the observable differences of people from high- and low-context cultures (e.g., Kim, Pan, & Park, 1998). In high-context cultures, such as China and Malaysia, for instance, knowing cultural rules and meanings is imperative. As Salleh (2005) stated, giving the gift of a clock to someone from China amounts to telling the receiver that the giver wants him or her to have a short life, whereas in Malaysia, the clock-as-gift exemplifies friendship. E. T. Hall’s (1966) work also delineated cultures into contact and noncontact groups, with those in contact cultures more likely to engage in touch and have smaller proxemic zones, a set of behaviors referred to elsewhere as immediacy cues (Mehrabian, 1981; see also Chapter 4, this handbook). The legacy of research on immediacy is itself vast (see Andersen et al., 2006). Another cultural dimension that has influenced the study of nonverbal communication is the i ndividualism/collectivism distinction (Hofstede, 1980). Although often criticized for its overreaching claims, the idea that some cultures focus more on personal achievement and responsibility and others use the group norms and values as more determinant of behavior has generated a large set of studies (e.g., Kowner & Wiseman, 2003; Ozdemir, 2008). Others have argued that there are people within

A History of Research on Nonverbal Communication

cultures who are more individualist or more collectivistic. Matsumoto and Kupperbusch (2001), for example, found that U.S. women who were more collectivistic tended to mask their negative emotions when communicating with others, a collectivist tendency toward harmony, even though they did not differ in their expression when alone compared to their individualist counterparts. As can be seen, this heritage draws our attention to the ways in which our larger social and cultural groups provide framings for how to use and understand nonverbal communication. It encourages us to think about nonverbal behaviors as learned and as understood largely within the communicative community in which it is based. The emphasis is on what makes people within one community alike and potentially at odds with others who do not have the cultural knowledge needed to understand the behavior from the perspective of those who use it. In so doing, it suggests places where communication between people can go “wrong,” and it provides means for increasing the chances that people can communicate well through greater cultural sensitivity. ETHOLOGICAL HERITAGE As noted, the cultural heritage of nonverbal communicative inquiry highlights the centrality of our social environment in our understanding of nonverbal communication. In doing so, it provides a very different vantage point than another of our key heritages. This other set of work, while sometimes looking at culture, functions more commonly to determine what is universal in our use and interpretation of nonverbal cues. In his text, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin (1872) helped to set a trajectory for an ethological heritage, one that relies on the study of animals, at least to some degree and usually within context, to understand human behavior (see also Chapter 4, this handbook). One of the primary legacies of this tradition is the very active contemporary research focus on the biological origins of nonverbal cues, although not all of it ties to animal behavior directly. The closest to

Darwin’s observations, however, is work that Floyd (2006) suggested takes an evolutionary approach to nonverbal research, one “brand” within an ethological heritage. For Floyd, it is Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection that is most salient as a foundation for contemporary scholarship on the biology of nonverbal communication. Work on the biological bases of attraction (e.g., Bradley, Miccoli, Escrig, & Lang, 2008; Janssen & Everaerd, 1993) also are offshoots of the evolutionary approach. Indeed, the legacies for this heritage are many. One is the argument that nonverbal cues have adaptive value for us and that they can be tied to who we are as a species. These kinds of studies, whether explicitly calling themselves ethological or evolutionary, assume that certain nonverbal cues will occur universally, as they are based in who we are as human. The most well-known of these focuses on the universal expression of emotions, not surprising given Darwin’s influence. In particular, Ekman, Matsumoto, and their colleagues (e.g., Ekman, 1993; Matsumoto, 2006; Matsumoto, Keltner, Shiota, Frank, & O’Sullivan, 2008) have shown that people from an array of cultural backgrounds all can decode particular facial expressions accurately. In a recent review, Burgoon, Guerrero, and Manusov (2011) summarized related research that has also identified basic or primary emotions that are expressed on people’s face the same way across cultures (see, e.g., Izard, 1977; Tomkins, 1963), with happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust encoded most consistently. Additional support for the universal and biological bases of nonverbal cues comes from studies of child development, which have shown that typically developing children follow relatively set stages of emotional development and exhibit like expressions at each successive stage. Other evidence comes from studies of children who are hearing or sight impaired or who are limbless and not able to experience certain touch senses. Yet, the children, who cannot learn emotional displays through sensory experience, still express universally recognized emotions (see, e.g., Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1973; Galati, Scherer, & Ricci-Bitti, 1997).

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Perhaps the biggest legacy of this heritage is, however, controversy regarding the degree to which emotional expressions are as universal and biologically based as they may appear. Indeed, some of the research grounded in other heritages, such as our cultural and (to some extent) the sociological traditions, features the social and cultural influences that complement—or supercede—biology. Furthermore, many who work to show universality also highlight the role of culture (e.g., Ekman, 1977, particularly in his introduction of display rules). Still others, however, question the degree to which our facial displays in interaction are best characterized as emotional expressions. For example, Fridlund and Russell (2006) have argued that, rather than seeing our facial movements as displays of emotions, we should view them as a sort of “social tool” (p. 299) that allow us to communicate things such as attitude, acknowledgment, agreement, and the like and that therefore play a large role in how our interactions unfold. Motley (1993) has provided evidence that our facial cues are most typically in the form of communicative interjections (i.e., suggesting agreements, queries, concerns) that may be picked up and acted on by another. Perhaps more than any heritage, this controversy has provided an ongoing legacy and a large body of scholarship (for further discussion, see Chapter 10, this handbook). A related legacy is the argument that, and contrasting with the belief of one integrated system, there are multiple forms of behavior that occur in our interactions, each of which has a more biological or more social basis. Buck and VanLear (2002), for instance, say that there are three co-occurring communicative streams: spontaneous (nonverbal cues that are automatic and biologically based), pseudospontaneous (cues that appear like spontaneous cues but are adapted to the communicative context, such as opening up one’s eyes and raising one’s brows to show the other that one is surprised), and symbolic (cues that are wholly arbitrary and socially defined, including emblems like an “okay” thumbs up in the United States). In his earlier work, Buck (1984) has provided evidence that the different streams of behavior are neurologically processed differently. Given this same grounding, Andersen (2008) has made the case for why we should only 10

call those cues that are spontaneous “nonverbal communication,” with the rest better seen as part of “language.” This heritage, then, provides salience to the inherited nature of nonverbal cues. Whereas those working in this tradition point out that some behaviors are culturally derived and understood, their emphasis is instead on those actions that have adaptive value. They are also more likely to emphasize the universality (and, sometimes, the cross-species similarity) and automaticity of certain ways of communicating and to locate the biological origins of some (or, for certain scholars, much) of what we do nonverbally. PSYCHOLOGICAL HERITAGE The decision to look at the neurological basis of nonverbal cues is also at the heart of a large body of work in the study of nonverbal communication. According to Lakin (2006), “understanding nonverbal communication relies, to some extent, on appreciating its cognitive foundation” (p. 59). Given this, it is not surprising that researchers have queried the ways in which nonverbal cues are tied to cognitive structures and processes, with a particular interest in the degree to which nonverbal cues are processed automatically or with greater awareness and control (see, e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999), creating a relatively heated battle over the nature of nonverbal behaving. Not all work from the psychological heritage regards mental processing per se. More common are those research areas that tie nonverbal cues to important individual traits or interaction outcomes (see also Chapter 23, this handbook). Gifford (2006), in his review of research on personality and nonverbal communication, has taken us back to Aristotle, and others, as the start of this heritage. In particular, he has argued for an early connection made between our physical bodies and our psychological selves, particularly what is now seen as personality. According to Gifford, “from Aristotle’s time, physiognomists [those who judge human character from observing the face] have been certain that they can discern personality solely from a person’s facial features” (p. 160).

A History of Research on Nonverbal Communication

Whereas Gifford has concluded rightfully that such an approach has been firmly “discredited” over time (but see important work on such things as eye color and temperament; e.g., Rosenberg & Kagan, 1989), it has a strong and important legacy of research investigating the many ways that psychological processes explain and are related to our nonverbal cues. Part of this is showing, on the one hand, just how complex the relationship—where it exists—is between facets of the personality and nonverbal cues expressing those facets (Gifford, 2006; see also Chapters 9 and 10, this handbook, for static facial clues). Part of it is also research methodologies that reflect, on the other hand, how little it can take to judge certain states or traits accurately from observing “thin slices” of interaction (Ambady, Krabbenhoft, & Hogan, 2006; Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993). An additional implication is the degree to which states of mind—and states of relationship—can emerge from the nonverbal behaviors used during interaction. Among these states is rapport. According to Tickle-Degnen (2006), “rapport is used to indicate a meaningful human experience of close and harmonious connection that involves common understanding” (p. 381). There are several nonverbal cues or skills that have been found to be part of establishing rapport. These include nonverbal expressivity (Boone & Buck, 2003), positive affect (depending on the context; Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1990), and the coordination of behavior (Burgoon, Stern, & Dillman, 1995), discussed earlier as a function of nonverbal cues. Moreover, the establishment of rapport has been found to have a wide range of social benefits. There is additional work from this heritage that emphasizes the social implications of nonverbal behavior. Robert Rosenthal (1974), for example, is well-known for showing that people have expectancies for others that show up in their nonverbal communication. In particular, he found that such expectancies occur commonly in the classroom and in the research laboratory (see Rosenthal, 2003). More poignantly, these communicated expectancies may influence the behaviors and outcomes of the people about whom the expectancies are held. That is, they may work as a self-fulfilling prophecy

(Rosenthal, 1974). Part of Rosenthal’s concern had to do with the sometimes subtle persuasive ability of nonverbal cues. Particularly in light of atrocities that occurred before and during World War II, many researchers from the psychological tradition aimed to discern how people can become convinced to do something that they may otherwise not have done. One of these factors was status and its relation to power, as expressed by the dress and demeanor of an experimenter (e.g., Milgram, 1974). A legacy of this line of research is a focus on sex differences and similarities (see also Chapter 6, this handbook). In 1977, Nancy M. Henley put forward the provocative subordination hypothesis proposing that differences in the behaviors of males and females is aligned with differences in behaviors of people in high and low status or power. Furthermore, some studies have supported this (see review by Burgoon, Guerrero, & Floyd, 2010). However, Judith A. Hall and her colleagues (J. A. Hall, 2006; J. A. Hall, Coats, & LeBeau, 2005) asserted that the idea that there is a “vertical dimension” (i.e., power structure) that explains sex differences in behavior has little support. They argued instead that what differences there are—and there are many similarities—can be explained better by the ways in which males and females are “skilled” differently by both biological and social means. For instance, girls are taught to be more relationally oriented and are therefore encouraged to attend to others’ nonverbal cues. This finding is consistent with a research concern regarding nonverbal communication as a skill, both as something that can be learned and also something that, if impaired, can have important consequences. Riggio and Riggio (2005) summarized many of the measures that have developed to access the degree to which people can, for example, express or decode emotions. Others, such as Duke and Nowicki (2005), have focused on particular, often congenital, conditions, such as dyssemia, that make communicating nonverbally difficult. Research on autism also falls into this category (e.g., Yoder, Stone, Walden, & Malesa, 2009). Likewise, other scholars (e.g., Segrin, 2000) have focused on more transitory states, such as depression, and the influence it has on people’s use of nonverbal skills. Such influence is often the exacerbation of such conditions. 11

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Overall, the psychological heritage encourages investigation of the individual (or the group) and the ways in which nonverbal cues reflect the person and his or her skills, dispositions, and motivations. It has allowed us to see where real differences lie and also to show where stereotypes may exist. That is, work from this heritage points to where people believe there are ties between personality and nonverbal cues (perception studies) and what links there may actually be. Often, we perceive as communicators much more connection than research suggests exists, and this is exacerbated in the media, which often misconstrues research findings about perceptions to actual ways in which nonverbal cues are associated with dispositions. As Gifford (2006) noted, the psychological origins of certain nonverbal cues make up a “complex conundrum.” CONCLUSION As this chapter—and this handbook—shows, the study of nonverbal communication has a rich history, one that runs both deep and wide. Each heritage delineated here takes us along certain paths in our exploration of nonverbal communication; however, walking along those paths provides only a partial view of our large and varied field. Given that certain heritages are also tied to certain intellectual areas (e.g., the rhetorical heritage is most well-known and its paths followed most often by communication scholars; the psychological heritage is more likely to follow the assumptions of and be the basis for work by psychologists), it is important to have at least a glimpse of other traditions to know what we include—and what we may be missing—in our individual inquiries. When seen as a broad set of research programs meant to understand the myriad modes of communicating, these heritages and their legacies are all worth illuminating. In some ways, however, in this chapter I have only scratched the surface in highlighting some of these traditions, the people and ideas that created and stem from these traditions, and the areas where our divergent histories may help explain the differences in perspective on answering some of the truly foundational questions about human behavior that are queried within our field. My hope was to reflect 12

the many heritages that inform our contemporary understanding of nonverbal communication and, perhaps for some readers, broaden the sense of what counts as “nonverbal research.” As noted, I also wanted to reflect the respect that I have—and that I hope we all share—for the diversity of the terrain we, as a group of scholars, have charted as we explore the vast message potential and the possible and poignant consequences of nonverbal means of communicating.

References Ambady, N., Krabbenhoft, M. A., & Hogan, D. (2006). The 30-sec sale: Using thin-slice judgments to evaluate sales effectiveness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 16, 4–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/ s15327663jcp1601_2 Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1993). Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 431–441. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ 0022-3514.64.3.431 Andersen, P. A. (2008). Nonverbal communication: Forms and functions (2nd ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Andersen, P. A., Guerrero, L. K., & Jones, S. M. (2006). Nonverbal behavior in intimate interactions and intimate relationships. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 259–278). http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4135/9781412976152.n14 Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54, 462–479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ 0003-066X.54.7.462 Bavelas, J. B., & Chovil, N. (2006). Nonverbal and verbal communication: Hand gestures and facial displays as part of language use in face-to-face dialogue. In V. Manusov & M. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 97–115). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n6 Bernieri, F. J., & Rosenthal, R. (1991). Interpersonal coordination: Behavior matching and interactional synchrony. In R. S. Feldman & B. Rimé (Eds.), Fundamentals of nonverbal behavior (pp. 401–432). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Birdwhistell, R. L. (1970). Kinesics and context: Essays on body motion communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bixler, N. R. (2010). Walk me home: How bodies move and are moved in the breast cancer walk (Unpublished

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doctoral dissertation). University of Washington, Seattle. Blair, C., Balthrop, V. W., & Michel, N. (2011). The arguments of the tombs of the unknown: Relationality and national legitimation. Argumentation, 25, 449–468. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s10503-011-9216-9 Blair, C., Dickinson, G., & Ott, B. L. (2010). Rhetoric/ memory/place. In G. Dickinson, C. Blair, & B. L. Ott (Eds.), Places of public memory: The rhetoric of museums and memorials (pp. 1–54). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Boone, R. T., & Buck, R. (2003). Emotional expressivity and trustworthiness: The role of nonverbal behavior in the evolution of cooperation. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 27, 163–182. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/ A:1025341931128 Bradley, M. M., Miccoli, L., Escrig, M. A., & Lang, P. J. (2008). The pupil as a measure of emotional arousal and autonomic activation. Psychophysiology, 45, 602–607. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.14698986.2008.00654.x Buck, R. (1984). The communication of emotion. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Buck, R., & VanLear, C. A. (2002). Verbal and nonverbal communication: Distinguishing symbolic, spontaneous, and pseudo-spontaneous communication. Journal of Communication, 52, 522–541. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2002.tb02560.x Burgoon, J. K., & Dunbar, N. E. (2006). Nonverbal expressions of dominance and power in human relationships. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 279–297). http://dx.doi. org/10.4135/9781412976152.n15 Burgoon, J. K., Guerrero, L. K., & Floyd, K. (2010). Nonverbal communication. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Burgoon, J. K., Guerrero, L. K., & Manusov, V. (2011). Nonverbal signals. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), The Sage handbook of interpersonal communication (4th ed., pp. 239–280). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Burgoon, J. K., & Hale, J. L. (1984). The fundamental topoi of relational communication. Communication Monographs, 51, 193–214. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/03637758409390195 Burgoon, J. K., & Le Poire, B. A. (1999). Nonverbal cues and interpersonal judgments: Participant and observer perceptions of intimacy, dominance, composure, and formality. Communication Monographs, 66, 105–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 03637759909376467

Burgoon, J. K., Stern, L. A., & Dillman, L. (1995). Interpersonal adaptation: Dyadic interaction patterns. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720314 Carbaugh, D., Berry, M., & Nurmikari-Berry, M. (2006). Coding personhood through cultural terms and practices: Silence and quietude as a Finnish “natural way of being.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 25, 203–220. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/0261927X06289422 Cole, J. (1999). About face. Cambridge, MA: Bradford. Coupland, J. (2003). Ageist ideology and discourses of control in skincare product marketing. In J. Coupland & R. Gwyn (Eds.), Discourse, the body and identity (pp. 127–150). Basingstoke, England: Plagrave Macmillan. Darwin, C. R. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10001-000 Docan-Morgan, T., Manusov, V., & Harvey, J. (2013). When a small thing means so much: Nonverbal cues as turning points in relationships. Interpersona, 7, 110–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v7i1.119 Duke, M., & Nowicki, S. (2005). The Emory Dyssemia Index. In V. Manusov (Ed.), The sourcebook of nonverbal measures: Going beyond words (pp. 32–42). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Edwards, J., & Winkler, C. (1997). Representative form and the visual ideograph: The Iwo Jima imagesin editorial cartoons. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 83, 289–310. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 00335639709384187 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1973). Expressive behaviour of the deaf and blind born. In M. von Cranach & I. Vine (Eds.), Social communication and movement (pp. 163–194). New York, NY: Academic Press. Ekman, P. (1965). Communication through nonverbal behavior: A source of information about interpersonal relationship. In S. S. Tomkins & C. E. Izard (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and personality (pp. 390–442). New York, NY: Springer. Ekman, P. (1977). Biological and cultural contributions to body and facial movement. In J. Blacking (Ed.), Anthropology of the body (pp. 34–84). London, England: Academic Press. Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist, 48, 376–379. http://dx.doi. org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.4.384 Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1978). The Facial Action Coding System: A technique for the measurement of facial movement. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Ekman, P., & Rosenberg, E. L. (1997). What the face reveals: Basic and applied studies of spontaneous expression using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 13

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Floyd, K. (2006). An evolutionary approach to understanding nonverbal communication. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 139–158). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n8 Fridlund, A. J., & Russell, J. A. (2006). The functions of facial expressions: What’s in a face? In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 299–320). http:// dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n16 Galati, D., Scherer, K. R., & Ricci-Bitti, P. E. (1997). Voluntary facial expression of emotion: Comparing congenitally blind with normally sighted encoders. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1363–1379. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ 0022-3514.73.6.1363 Gifford, R. (2006). Personality and nonverbal behavior: A complex conundrum. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 159–179). http:// dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n9 Giles, H., Coupland, N., & Coupland, J. (1991). Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence. In H. Giles, J. Coupland, & N. Coupland (Eds.), Contexts of accommodation: Developments in applied sociolinguistics (pp. 1–68). http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511663673.001 Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gottman, J. M., McCoy, K., & Coan, J. (1996). The Specific Affect Coding System. In J. M. Gottman (Ed.), What predicts divorce? The measures (pp. 1–169). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hall, E. T. (1959). The silent language. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Hall, E. T. (1966). The hidden dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Hall, E. T. (1977). Beyond culture. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Hall, J. A. (2006). Women’s and men’s nonverbal communication: Similarities, differences, stereotypes, and origins. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp.201–218). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/ 9781412976152.n11 Hall, J. A., Coats, E. J., & LeBeau, L. S. (2005). Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 898–924. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ 0033-2909.131.6.898 Hawhee, D. (2009). Moving bodies: Kenneth Burke at the edges of language. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 14

Henley, N. M. (1977). Body politics: Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Izard, C. E. (1977). Human emotions. New York, NY: Plenum. Janssen, E., & Everaerd, W. (1993). Determinants of male sexual arousal. Annual Review of Sex Research, 4, 211–245. Kendon, A. (1985). Uses of gestures. In D. Tannen & M. Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on silence (pp. 215–234). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kim, D., Pan, Y., & Park, H. S. (1998). High-versus lowcontext culture: A comparison of Chinese, Korean, and American cultures. Psychology and Marketing, 15, 507–521. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)15206793(199809)15:63.0.CO;2-A Knapp, M. L. (2006). An historical overview of nonverbal research. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 3–19). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n1 Kowner, R., & Wiseman, R. (2003). Culture and status-related behavior: Japanese and American perceptions of interaction in asymmetric dyads. Cross-Cultural Research, 37, 178–210. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1069397103037002002 Lakin, J. L. (2006). Automatic cognitive processes and nonverbal communication. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 59–78). http://dx.doi. org/10.4135/9781412976152.n4 Levine, R. V. (1997). A geography of time: The temporal misadventures of a social psychologist. New York, NY: Basic Books. Matsumoto, D. (2006). Culture and nonverbal behavior. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 219–236). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n12 Matsumoto, D., Keltner, D., Shiota, M., Frank, M., & O’Sullivan, M. (2008). Facial expressions of emotion. In M. Lewis, J. Haviland, & L. Feldman-Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotion (pp. 211–234). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Matsumoto, D., & Kupperbusch, C. (2001). Idiocentric and allocentric differences in emotional expression, experience, and the coherence between expression and experience. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 113–131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467839X.2001.00080.x McNeill, D. (1985). So you think gestures are nonverbal? Psychological Review, 92, 350–371. http://dx.doi. org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.3.350 Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Mehrabian, A. (1981). Silent messages: Implicit communication of emotions and attitudes (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Motley, M. (1993). Facial affect and verbal context in conversation: Facial expression as interjection. Human Communication Research, 20, 3–40. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1993.tb00314.x Noller, P. (2006). Nonverbal communication in close relationships. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 403–420). http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4135/9781412976152.n21 Ozdemir, A. (2008). Shopping malls: Measuring interpersonal distance under changing conditions and across cultures. Field Methods, 20, 226–248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1525822X08316605 Patterson, M. L. (1991). A functional approach to nonverbal exchange. In R. S. Feldman & B. Rime (Eds.), Fundamentals of nonverbal behavior (pp. 458–495). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Philipsen, G. (2009). Researching culture in contexts of social interaction: An ethnographic approach, a network of scholars, illustrative moves. In D. Carbaugh & P. M. Buzzanell (Eds.), Distinctive qualities in communication research (pp. 87–105). New York, NY: Routledge. Quintilian, M. F. (1922). The institution oratoria, book XI (H. E. Butler, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published circa 90 CE) Riggio, R. E., & Riggio, H. R. (2005). Self-report measures of emotional and nonverbal expressiveness. In V. Manusov (Ed.), The sourcebook of nonverbal measures: Going beyond words (pp. 105–111). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Robinson, J. (2006). Nonverbal communication and physician–patient interaction. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 437–460). http:// dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n23 Rosenberg, A. A., & Kagan, J. (1989). Physical and physiological correlates of behavioral inhibition. Developmental Psychobiology, 22, 753–770. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1002/dev.420220802 Rosenthal, R. (1974). On the social psychology of the selffulfilling prophecy: Further evidence for Pygmalion effects and their mediating outcomes. New York, NY: M. S. S. Information Corporation Modular Publication.

Rosenthal, R. (2003). Covert communication in laboratories, classrooms, and the truly real world. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 151–154. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721. t01-1-01250 Salleh, L. M. (2005). Characteristics of high/low context in communication: The Malaysian Malay culture. Journal of Intergroup Relations, 32, 40–55. Scheflen, A. (1973). Communicational structure: Analysis of a psychotherapy interaction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Scheflen, A. (1974). How behavior means. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday. Schegloff, E. (1984). On some gestures’ relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 266–296). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ semi.1973.8.4.289 Segrin, C. (2000). Social skills deficits associated with depression. Clinical Psychology Review, 20, 379–403. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0272-7358(98)00104-4 Selzer, J., & Crowley, S. (Eds.). (1999). Rhetorical bodies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Streeck, J., & Knapp, M. L. (2002). Culture, meaning, and interpersonal communication. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 286–319). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Street, R. L., & Cappella, J. N. (Eds.). (1985). Sequence and pattern in communicative behaviour. London, England: Edward Arnold. Tickle-Degnen, L. (2006). Nonverbal behavior and its function in the ecosystem of rapport. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 381–400). http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412976152.n20 Tickle-Degnen, L., & Rosenthal, R. (1990). The nature of rapport and its nonverbal correlates. Psychological Inquiry, 1, 285–293. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/ s15327965pli0104_1 Tomkins, S. (1963). Affect imagery consciousness: Vol. 2. The negative affects. New York, NY: Springer. Yoder, P., Stone, W. L., Walden, T., & Malesa, E. (2009). Predicting social impairment and ASD diagnosis in younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 1381–1391. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ s10803-009-0753-0

Chapter 2

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication Theory and Research: Past, Present, Future Caroline F. Keating

When I entered social psychology graduate school in the 1970s, information about nonverbal communication was more likely found in the popular press than in professional journals. According to most of our professors, this was just where such material belonged. They took a dim view of the subject matter, seeing little scientific merit in what appeared to be either extraneous movements of the body or exotic habits of people not typically found in the university subject pool. In those years, graduate seminars focused instead on mathematical formulae for attitude change, learning and reinforcement theory, language, intelligence testing, and cognition. Even the study of face-to-face interactions favored verbal over nonverbal interpersonal processes—small wonder that the so-called group “risky shift” turned out to be a mirage. Only a handful of graduate programs offered courses in nonverbal communication at the time (Knapp, 2006). Furthermore, even though seminars on emotion were part of the general psychology curricula, that subject matter was taught as if it resided in a parallel universe, distant from mainstream problems in cognition and communication. The daily lesson was that “real” psychology had little to do with the nonverbal and everything to do with considered thought and language processes. Late in the evenings, however, when graduate students congregated in the dark hallways of academic buildings, a very cool, older graduate student in my program—a trim fellow who dressed in tight suede vests and cowboy boots—would occasionally pass around a rolled-up copy of the glossy, popular

magazine called Psychology Today. He claimed he read it for the articles: “Communication Without Words” (Mehrabian, 1968), “The New Truth Machine: Does Your Voice Give You Away?” (Rice, 1978), and “How Well Do You Read Body Language?” (Archer & Akert, 1977). Surreptitiously shared among us graduate students like some sort of porn, the magazine would eventually make its way around to me. The intrigue alone was enough to get anyone hooked, and I was no exception. It was a timely addiction. After largely slumbering through the post-Darwinian years of the 19th century, the scientific study of nonverbal communication was on the cusp of reawakening and revolution; fittingly, it had begun to stir in the United States during the 1960s. The intellectual climate of the time was swept up in a cultural storm that encouraged anticonventional thinking and a rejection of cultural values, all of which were expressed in the sensibilities of the day: uncut hair, limited use of deodorant but heavy musk in perfumes, beads and moccasins, altered states of consciousness, and music featuring throbbing base tones and drums that pulsed through the entire body and made it move. The 1960s were about getting back to our animal nature and tribal roots in a very nonverbal way. In academic circles, evidence of this awakening was flagged by the reprinting of key volumes around that time. Charles Darwin’s (1872) publication, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, was republished by The University of Chicago Press in 1965. Efron’s (1941) interesting read on gesture,

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Caroline F. Keating

race, and culture was reprinted in 1972. Huber’s (1931) work on facial anatomy and expression was also reprinted in 1972. The buds of a revived interest in nonverbal communication could be found in academe. Outside of academe the bloom in interest was on, nourished by the widening influence of television. Small black and white screens and later, larger, color ones sprang up in living rooms and kitchens everywhere. Shows such as To Tell the Truth and Candid Camera entertained viewers by putting their nonverbal communication sensitivities to the test. Television served a primal instinct, making a big, impersonal world seem more face-to-face. From home, viewers watched as national and international leaders, politicians, and celebrities were freshly disrobed by the camera’s capture of each spontaneous twitch of the body accompanying every crafted word. The would-be influencers had to be actors—good ones—or be crushed by television’s power to reveal telltale nonverbal signs of insincerity and vulnerability. Moreover, nonverbal communication skill could melt the coolness of the medium (McLuhan, 1964), enabling good performers to stoke passions and fan beliefs. Television opened a door to popular interest in understanding primal channels of communication and there developed a hunger for science to enter the fray. In the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the academic pioneers who took up the study of nonverbal communication often resorted to the popular press to promote their ideas. As early as 1951, Sheldon’s (1940) very visual work connecting human physique and character (The Varieties of Human Physique) appeared in popular form on the slick pages of Life magazine. Biologists and ethologists probed Darwinian connections between animal and human communication in paperback books: for example, Desmond Morris (1967) in The Naked Ape, Ashley Montagu (1971) in Touching, Jane Goodall (1971) in In the Shadow of Man, and R. Dale Guthrie (1976) in Body Hot Spots. Psychologist Robert Sommer’s (1969) paperback, Personal Space, described how humans and other species communicate through the use of space. Publications written from a cultural perspective included those by anthropologists Ray L. Birdwhistell (1970, Kinesics 18

and Context) and Edward T. Hall (1959, The Silent Language; 1966, The Hidden Dimension) as well as by symbolic interactionist Erving Goffman (e.g., 1959, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; 1967, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior), who saw language, posture, gaze, and gesture as a sort of orchestral arrangement. The popularity of these paperbacks was a sign of the times: Some early editions even showed up at Woodstock. However, popular interest in nonverbal communication was not just counterculture. Journalist Julian Fast’s (1970) Body Language was a New York Times bestseller (Weitz, 1974). Books by engineer-turned-psychologist Albert Mehrabian (1971, Silent Messages) and psychiatrist Albert E. Scheflen (1972, Body Language and Social Order; 1974, How Behavior Means) also flew off bookstore shelves. In many a mid-1970s graduate student’s office, towers of paperbacks served as bookends for hardcover textbooks, professional handbooks, and journals. Academic outlets began to warm to the infant science of nonverbal communication. By the late 1960s, Sommer (1967) published his research on interpersonal space and communication in Psychological Bulletin, and Mehrabian’s (1969) studies on status signaling via posture and position appeared on its pages along with Duncan’s (1969) article, “Nonverbal Communication.” The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology featured work on paralanguage by Dittmann and Llewellyn (e.g., 1967, 1969), and in the early 1970s, it showcased work by Duncan (1972). In Acta Psychologica, Kendon (1967, 1970) wrote on gaze and on the nonverbal aspects of what would be called rapport today (Tickle-Degnen, 2006). Watson’s (1972) work on proxemics was published in the Journal of Communication. Articles by Mehrabian (1972b), Ekman (1972), and Exline (1972) appeared in the prestigious Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Cole, 1972). At about the same time, three textbooks were published with “nonverbal communication” in their titles (i.e., Eisenberg & Smith, 1971; Knapp, 1972; Mehrabian, 1972a). Articles on nonverbal behavior showed up with some regularity in flagship psychology journals as the 1970s progressed, and Semiotica—largely devoted to nonverbal research—was launched. Journals dedicated to verbal discourse (e.g., Journalism

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication

Quarterly, Communication Monographs, and Human Communication Research) began to welcome articles on nonverbal communication (e.g., Burgoon, 1978; Burgoon & Jones, 1976), and Burgoon and Saine (1978) published the text, The Unspoken Dialogue. Still, serious, sustained work on nonverbal communication lagged the intense interest reflected in the popular press. A notable exception to the gap in interest came from researchers studying emotion. Scholars such as Silvan S. Tomkins had persisted in studying human emotion from a Darwinian perspective, despite the epic events of World War II and Skinnerian psychology. Tomkins (1962, 1963) tied emotion to expression, and his ideas gathered steam in the late 1960s and 1970s as Paul Ekman, Cal Izard, and their colleagues synergized the field. In addition, Ekman, Sorenson, and Friesen’s (1969) seminal research on cross-cultural facial expressions of emotion was published in Science. Izard (1971), who conducted developmental as well as cross-cultural research, published his findings in The Face of Emotion. Altogether, these theorists shaped much of what is believed about emotion and expression today (see also Chapter 10, this handbook). Meanwhile, scholars operating from an ethological perspective blended knowledge from animal communication studies with human research. Iranis Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1972), a student of ethologist Konrad Lorenz, published his extensive work on culture and nonverbal communication in Robert A. Hinde’s (1972) edited volume, Nonverbal Communication. That compendium of work drew connections between primate and human expression, including van Hooff’s (1972) compelling argument that the primate grin face and human smile are homologous (Keating, Mazur, Segall, et al., 1981). Hewes (1973) contributed important cross-species work in Current Anthropology, arguing that gesture was at the root of human language, an idea that survives in new forms today (e.g., Bavelas & Chovil, 2006; GoldinMeadow, 2005; Kelly, Hansen, & Clark, 2012; Kendon, 2004; D. McNeill, 1992; see also Chapter12, this handbook). Blurton Jones (1972), Konner (1972), and McGrew (1972) applied ethological techniques to understand children’s nonverbal communication. Thus, the squeeze of evolutionary thinking stuck

human to nonhuman communication, upping the ante for those researchers betting on spoken language and cultural artifact alone. Even bigger ideas linking all of human and animal social behavior arrived with fanfare and controversy upon publication of Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson’s (1975) weighty and explosive volume, Sociobiology. Its central message—that human and nonhuman social behavior fit patterns shaped by natural selection—was exquisitely complemented by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett’s (1978) Brainstorms. Among other things, Dennett’s patient argumentation maintained that the behavioral displays of animals reflect social intentions akin to those inferred for humans. These arguments were made more appetizing by skillful, cross-over writers such as Stephen J. Gould (1973, Ever Since Darwin) and Richard Dawkins (1976, The Selfish Gene), who commanded both the scientific and the popular stage. Thus, the intellectual backdrop framing the new popularity of functional approaches to human nonverbal communication was set in the broad, scientific milieu of the time. OVERVIEW My task from here on in this chapter is to trace the scholarly lineages of theory and research in nonverbal communication and to identify the thrust of their projections into its future. This is a daunting quest—impossible, really—because many creative minds from different areas of expertise over decades and even centuries contributed to our present-day understanding of human nonverbal communication. Scholarly works on gesture and rhetoric can be found in the writings of philosophers, teachers, and politicians ranging from Confucius in the 6th century, BC, to Aristotle (around 350 BCE), to Cicero and other Roman orators centuries later (Knapp, 2006). Ideas from these early times permeate much of how we conceptualize human psychology, including nonverbal communication. This neat find, a quote from Socrates, makes the point: Nobility and dignity, self-abasement and servility, prudence and understanding, insolence and vulgarity, are reflected in the face and in the attitudes of the body 19

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whether still or in motion. (Xenophon, Memorabilia [III.x]) The idea that static as well as dynamic nonverbal channels have communicative value has outlived centuries and is represented in the research reviewed here. Our analysis fast-forwards to comparatively recent developments in nonverbal communication theory and research. While acknowledging intellectual inspirations from the more distant past, our pursuit of major themes begins in the 1960s, the decade that Knapp (2006) considered a “tipping point” (p. 11) in the modern incarnation of nonverbal communication research, and Knapp, Hall, and Horgan (2014) described as a “nuclear explosion of the topic” (p. 23). We focus on general, theoretical perspectives that influenced research through decades. Rather than cataloging years of literature, I have excised from its corpus theoretical structures that gave direction to contemporary, nonverbal communication research and that evoke new questions. Important elements of this science story are missing from these pages. Theoretical models related to particular research endeavors (e.g., models related to intimacy, parent–infant interaction, and race relations) are not covered. Also missing from this chapter is discussion of the role that nonverbal communication plays in embodied perception and emotion regulation. In addition, the crucial role of advances in the technologies used to study nonverbal communication receives only brief mention. APPROACHES TO NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Like any form of communication, nonverbal communication is social; it makes information accessible to others (W. J. Smith, 1977). At some level, nonverbal communication causes a change in the recipient; the expresser, of course, is hoping for the intended change. Long before the pen was believed to be mightier than the sword, the expressive, nonverbal arts carried the day, enabling coordinated action among group-living prehominids and humans through signaling, modeling, display, contagion, 20

mimicry, and synchrony (Buck, 1984; Buck & Renfro Powers, 2006; Van Vugt, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2008; Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). Signaling intentions and status was a way to avoid costly, physical confrontations and to enhance biological fitness because signaling was less risky and energetically cheap (Alexander, 1974; Caryl, 1979; Dawkins & Krebs, 1978; Mazur, 1985). As civilizations developed on different continents, humans ritualized nonverbal messaging by developing gestural protocols, cosmetics and other body adornments, costumes, music, and dance aimed at deepening social roots and expanding social branches (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1972, 1975; Etcoff, Stock, Haley, Vickery, & House, 2011; W. H. McNeill, 1995). Today, nonverbal communication skill is believed essential to emotional intelligence and, for better or worse, to charismatic leadership (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002; Keating, 2011; Riggio & Riggio, 2010; see also Chapter 23, this handbook). Therefore, it seems that, at many levels, humans understand the mighty power of nonverbal communication quite well. At the scientific level, the processes guiding nonverbal communication are less well understood. Over the decades, behavioral scientists have approached the problem from two distinguishable traditions. One emphasizes affective states underlying expression. The second emphasizes communication as an interactive process, contextualized by social relationships and social motives. Biological and cultural elements characterize both. Although the central foci of each tradition are discernibly different, they share substantial overlap: Some theorists have operated within each tradition, whereas others have blended them. The two large circles in Figure 2.1 represent each emphasis and the overlap between them. This chapter proceeds by exploring some of the major theoretical approaches developed under each scholarly tradition, plotted so as to reflect its emphasis (or emphases).

Emotion and Expression At the very least, nonverbal behavior can be said to enable the expression of genuine, internal states, as neurophysiological evidence has shown over the past 30 years (see Dalgleish, 2004, for a review).

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication

CONCEPTUAL EMPHASIS ON EMOTION

COMMUNICATION

INTERACTIONISTS of the 1950s, 60s, 70s LENS MODELS GIFFORD 1994 SCHERER 2003 BASIC EMOTIONS

AFFORDANCES ZEBROWITZ 1983

DARWIN 1872

MONTEPARE

TOMKINS 1962

TICKLE-DEGNEN 2006

EKMAN 1969 IZARD 1971 MATSUMOTO 1990

STATUS CUES MAZUR 1973 KEATING 1985 BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY VIEW FRIDLUND 1994 PARALLEL PROCESS MODEL PATTERSON 2006

FIGURE 2.1. A depiction of differing conceptual emphases on emotion versus communication in nonverbal communication research. The theories and models listed serve as examples of the differing degrees to which “basic” emotions are imputed from nonverbal behavior.

Just as importantly, displays of these states draw affective responses from others (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994; Lishner, Cooter, & Zald, 2008; Moody, McIntosh, Mann, & Weisser, 2007; Ruys & Stapel, 2008), which is likely why we often do not keep our affect to ourselves. The contagion of affect may be partly responsible for the evolution of the emotion communication platform from primitive nervous systems that delivered fast, reflexive or relatively automatic responses designed to save skins, to more elaborated, conscious, differentiated, and complexly communicative systems that helped save the skins—and genes—of kin and coalition partners (de Gelder, 2006; Keltner & Haidt, 1999; Tamietto & de Gelder, 2010). In fact, as knowledge of brain systems expands, the more evidence there is that cognitive mechanisms are integral to human emotion processes, and the more difficult it is to argue that emotion leads to expression in any simple way (Pessoa & Adolphs, 2010; Posner, Russell, & Peterson, 2005; Salzman & Fusi, 2010).

No surprise, then, that how emotion and expression relate remains controversial. For that matter, conceptualizing “emotion” stirs debate, though most theorists would probably agree that emotional reactions to environmental events cascade through multiple processes: physiological responses, action tendencies, subjective feelings, expression, cognitive appraisal, and learned habits among them, but not necessarily in that order (Mulligan & Scherer, 2012). Over the decades, models of emotion have differed in the degree to which they conceive of emotions as a function of internal states versus component processes (Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda, 2013; Scherer & Ellgring, 2007). Some theorists view emotions as basic, discreet categories (Darwin, 1872/1965; Ekman, 1972; Ekman et al., 1969; Izard, 1971; Tomkins, 1962, 1963). Others construe emotions along dimensions of internal experiences (Posner et al., 2005; Russell, 1980; Schlosberg, 1954; Wundt, 1897). There are prototype models of emotion (Plutchik, 1980; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & 21

Caroline F. Keating

O’Connor, 1987) and appraisal theories of emotion (e.g., Arnold, 1960; Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1970; Scherer, 2001; Scherer, Clark-Polner, & Mortillaro, 2011). The study of nonverbal communication is impacted by these differing views of emotion, and nonverbal displays implicate important distinctions among models of emotion, as I show later. Did Darwin conjure these complexities in the emotion communication story? Darwin spent the mid-19th century studying emotion and expression, and he published his exceptional work in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872. He envisioned a set of core, human expressive categories, among them joy, grief, fear, surprise, anger, contempt, disgust, pride, and shame. The latter Darwin (1872/1965) linked to blushing, which he considered to be “the most human of all expressions” (p. 309). Darwin took the core set of expressions to be universal, offering as evidence observations they each (a) appeared early in life, (b) were evident among blind-born people, and (c) could be found in every culture. He attributed their ubiquity to genetic inheritance. Darwin’s observations have since been corroborated by formal studies, and many human emotion theorists concur with Darwin’s basic assumptions (see Ekman, 2003). Darwin (1872/1965) described an evolution of expression separate from emotion itself. He argued that elements of human and animal expressions and gestures evolved sometimes as a function of the nervous system (e.g., blushing), sometimes as associated habits that proved useful or serviceable when responding (e.g., weeping when sad), and sometimes because display elements made counter responses unlikely (e.g., smiling’s incompatibility with biting). Darwin observed that two expressive hallmarks of disgust—the wrinkling of noses, which closed the nostrils to defend against bad odors, and tongue protrusions, which facilitated the expulsion of bad food—were linked to common sources for feelings of disgust. To Darwin, then, facial expression and emotion had collateral but not necessarily shared origins (Fridlund & Russell, 2006) that may have adaptively converged over time. Arguments both for and against that proposition can be unearthed from the pages of Darwin’s extensive 22

observations and analyses. Either way, what Darwin observed was fuel for the evolution of communication because, as geneticist Ernst Mayr (1988) put it, “Behavior is the pacemaker of evolution” (p. 408). Even epigenetic influences can drive evolution (Riddihough & Zahn, 2010). A century after Darwin, differing interpretations of his scholarship resulted in what Fridlund and Russell (2006) described as a “bifurcation” (p. 300) of the foundational explanations for facial expression. Actually, it was a fork in the road along the modern theoretical landscape of nonverbal communication theory and research more generally. Psychologists studying human emotion adopted a view whereby expressions evolved expressly because they signaled basic emotions. Thus, emotion and its expression were seen as one: If you had an emotion, at some level you produced its expression (Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971). In contrast, scholars from ethological or ecological perspectives interpreted expressions and gestures as conveyers of intentions not necessarily linked to underlying, emotion states. You could intend and signal something but not feel it, or feel something and neither signal it or intend to carry it out. Researchers from cross-species traditions were especially hesitant to infer causative, unitary drive states from outward, expressive behaviors (Hinde, 1959), though many recognized evolutionary continuity between the expressive behaviors of human and nonhuman primates (Andrew, 1963; Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1973; Hewes, 1973; Pitcairn & Eiblesfeldt, 1976; Redican, 1982; van Hooff, 1972). More recently, however, primatologist Frans B. M. De Waal (2003) attributed humanlike felt emotion to the expressions of select great apes. In contrast, others drawn to the ethological perspective included systems-theory interactionists, for whom the meaning of behavior derived not from internal states but from interaction best studied in its natural, social habitat (e.g., Scheflen, 1972). Whether from the emotion or ethological/ ecological tradition, the decades-long theoretical divide between the degree to which researchers imputed basic emotion to expression spawned divergent approaches to the study of nonverbal communication.

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication

Thus, to human emotion researchers, facial expressions provided a window on emotion itself: its phylogeny (e.g., Darwin, 1872/1965; Tomkins, 1962), ontogeny (e.g., Darwin, 1877/1956; Izard, 1971; Oster, 2005), typology (e.g., Darwin, 1872/1965; Ekman, Levenson, & Friesen, 1983), intensity (e.g., Matsumoto & Ekman, 1989), and cultural universality or specificity (Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Matsumoto, 1989; Matsumoto, Olide, Schug, Willingham, & Callan, 2009). A core set of emotions was believed temporally linked not only to phenomenological experience and discreet, bodily responses but also to sets of specific, facial musculature movements that express them (Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971). Precise study of the facial movements accompanying different emotions led to the eventual development of the Facial Affect Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, 1978), which subsequently proved to be a valuable coding tool for researchers studying a variety of expressive behaviors (e.g., Ekman & Rosenberg, 2005). In essence, facial expression, though not always visible to the naked eye, was considered part and parcel of a congruent response system peculiar to a particular emotion: It is seen this way by many researchers today. Both Ekman and Izard took strong, universalist positions, arguing that “basic” categories of emotion were common to humankind and, therefore, had shared expressive features. The basic emotion categories identified and tested by these theorists through exhaustive, empirical research overlapped with Darwin’s expressive categories: happiness (or joy), surprise, anger, fear, sadness, and disgust. Izard (1971), who studied infants, included an emotion he designated as interest. Eventually Ekman, following Darwin’s lead, added contempt to his basic six (Ekman & Friesen, 1986). The idea was that fundamental affects could be expressed in pure form or blended with one another, thereby accounting for the more nuanced emotions and expressions evident in everyday life (Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971). Culture is a natural laboratory for testing arguments for and against the universality of human emotions. Over decades of cross-cultural and cross-national research, human antennae have been found to be sensitive to the six or seven basic facial expressions of emotion that Ekman and Izard

defined (Ekman, 1972; Ekman et al., 1969; Izard, 1971, 1997). When given the opportunity to assign posed expressions of emotions to prelabeled emotion categories, agreement has been remarkably high across cultures. Furthermore, when either asked to pose basic emotions or when stimulated with particular, emotion-eliciting stimuli, participants from Western-centric and non-Western cultures as far-flung as Papua New Guinea produce expressions recognizable to the majorities of perceivers from all backgrounds (see Matsumoto, 2009, for a review). Overall, the evidence was taken to mean that people from very different cultural backgrounds express and interpret basic categories of emotion in similar ways. Some evidence from brain, physiological, and anatomical studies is largely consistent with the construal of the proposed basic, emotion categories. Neural pathways carry emotion signals to and from different response centers quickly, often without much cortical involvement (e.g., LeDoux, 1996; cf. Dalgleish, 2004). Developmentally, the brain seems tuned to the basic, facial expressions of emotions early in life (Leppänen & Nelson, 2012). Brief exposure to basic emotional expressions triggers matched facial behavior (as measured by electromyography) and reported emotion in adults (Lishner et al., 2008). Adult brain responses to facial displays of fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, and surprise register distinct patterns of processing activity that are rapid and appear automatic (Batty & Taylor, 2003). Patterned, physiological responses differentiate emotion from reflexes such as the startle (Ekman, Friesen, & Simons, 1985) and also distinguish emotion types (e.g., Ekman et al., 1983; Levenson, 1992). For example, temperature rises in response to anger and falls in response to surprise (Ekman et al., 1983). Anatomical studies of cadavers reveal that the facial musculature needed to express the basic emotions is reliably present, suggesting that natural selection favored these specific emotions (Waller, Cray, & Burrows, 2008). Thus, to some it appears that humans come prefabricated to encode and decode specific types of emotion-related, nonverbal communication. Perhaps more importantly, the idea that emotion categories organize human emotional experience and expression has mustered neuroanatomical “legs.” 23

Caroline F. Keating

Theorists posited early on that humans came biologically prepared not simply to express affective states but also to control their display. From a basic emotions perspective, researchers identified cultural habits of expression or display rules that modified the communication value of expressions (Ekman & Friesen, 1969; Matsumoto, 1990; also see Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013). These modifications were often induced by social contexts. Interactants and audiences, both real and imagined, were able to attenuate a person’s expression, and to sometimes amplify it, and at other times alter the type of emotion conveyed (e.g., Manstead, Fischer, & Jakobs, 1999). Genuine emotion is sometimes nowhere to be (easily) seen. When it comes to out-and-out lying, the implications of theoretically tying emotion to expression with a tight knot are profound, for to catch a liar means detecting hidden signs of genuine feeling. Research pioneers began by analyzing frame-byframe videotapes of clinical patients (Ekman & Friesen, 1969). More recent success has been achieved by identifying split-second, microexpressions that presumably flag true, underlying emotion (Ekman, 2009; Frank & Svetieva, 2013; Porter & ten Brinke, 2008). The idea that both face and body are potential sources of “leaked” emotion and deception clues has pop culture appeal, as evidenced by the popular Fox TV series, Lie to Me, which is based on the Ekman group’s research on deception. Though face and body offer important clues to true feelings (Ekman & Friesen, 1969), the preeminence of the face as a signaling channel for emotion was only occasionally challenged during decades of research on emotional expression. One early exception was Davitz (1964), who found that listeners could perceive emotions from U.S. speakers instructed to perform different emotional recitations of the English alphabet. Since then, evidence has shown that emotion categories can be derived from vocal communication across languages and cultures (Fridlund, 1994; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010; Scherer, 2003; Scherer, Banse, & Wallbott, 2001), as Darwin (1872/1965) anticipated (see also Chapter 11, this handbook). More recently, the emotion categories approach has been applied to nonverbal channels beyond face 24

and voice. Five basic emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and disgust) plus three prosocial emotions (love, gratitude, and sympathy) were successfully encoded and decoded (enacted and categorized consistently) through touch (Hertenstein, Holmes, McCullough, & Keltner, 2009). Body posture and body expression convey basic emotions (de Gelder, 2006), augment facial affect displays (Van den Stock, Righart, & de Gelder, 2007), and are possibly best at signaling extreme emotions (Aviezer, Trope, & Todorov, 2012). Different kinds of laughter convey different kinds of emotion as well (Szameitat et al., 2009). Emotion has a fleet of nonverbal vehicles to convey it, and researchers have only begun to catch the ride (see also Chapter 17, this handbook).

Questions and Controversies Despite evidence for universalist positions on human emotion and expression, there is a pervasive worry that the methodologies used to test the ubiquity of Western-derived human emotion categories fall short in meaningful ways (e.g., Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Russell, 1994; Scherer et al., 2011). Much of the supportive research relies on preconceived emotion categories developed in the West, forced choice response formats, heavy reliance on recognition protocols, recognition of posed (not spontaneous) emotion, still photographs, a preoccupation with faces, emotion judgments of culturally unfamiliar faces (often professional actors), and limited samples of international respondents in terms of social class and education (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Scherer et al., 2011). In addition, variability in emotion encoding and decoding within cultures has seldom been studied (see Safdar et al., 2009, for an exception). The uniformity of the cross-cultural results depends to some degree on the methodology used; generally, the more constrained the procedures, the greater the agreement (see Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002, for a meta-analysis and review). Thus, some question whether the most basic, universalist assumptions—that humans “chunk” and experience emotions similarly, and express and interpret emotional experience in a consistent fashion—are fully supported by the available data (Fridlund & Russell, 2006; Scherer et al., 2011).

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication

Has research on emotion and facial expression been blinded by the bright lines of Western, imposed-etic construction of emotion categories? Early, open-ended efforts to elicit non-Western conceptualizations and translations of affective experience and expression seem to have been shortcircuited, perhaps by the apparent success of the Western, etic approach. Alternative, affect-related models of nonverbal processes that focused on general arousal received little traction (e.g., Andersen, Guerrero, Buller, & Jorgensen, 1998; Argyle & Dean, 1965; Cappella & Green, 1984). Meanwhile, evidence confirming that emotion elicitors, appraisals, and expressions were aptly described by the six or seven basic emotion categories was undeniably strong. Yet, when researchers go looking for emotion in far-off places, they tend to bring their basic categories with them or to match what they find to them, without offering competing conceptualizations. Stimuli, response formats, and measurement techniques in laboratory settings are operationalized in such a way as to favor the anticipated, basic emotion categories. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that we may need to step outside them. Expressions gathered from real-world situations and real-world reports of experienced emotion are sometimes poorly related (Carroll & Russell, 1996; Parkinson, 2005); what people claim to feel is no guarantee for how they appear to feel, or even how they think they appear to feel, or how they theoretically should feel, given situational events (Reisenzein, Studtmann, & Horstmann, 2013). Tickling produces Duchenne (pleasure) smiles experienced as unpleasant (Harris & Alvarado, 2005). Difficulty distinguishing between the smiles of victorious and disappointed Olympic athletes (Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995) and the tears of winning game show contestants are high-profile examples of the emotion/expression discontinuity—others are more mundane (Camras, 1992). When affect is expressed spontaneously, it rarely matches the posed, emotion prototypes seen in manuals and used as stimuli, leading to concerns about their ecological validity (Russell & Carroll, 1999). There is disconnect between expression and expected experience.

Meanwhile, expressions of embarrassment, shame, and pride are common in everyday life, and each is expressed in highly choreographed ways (e.g., Keltner, 1995; Tracy & Robins, 2008). However, none are considered basic emotions (Ekman & Rosenberg, 2005; Izard, 2007; Matsumoto, Frank, & Hwang, 2013). Instead, these displays are believed to draw their expressive elements from the basic emotions that we rarely see in prototypical form. Perhaps shame draws from sadness (Ekman & Rosenberg, 2005)—or given the evolution of our social brain (Dunbar & Shultz, 2007), could it be the other way around? Kinks in the chain linking feeling, expression, and action may lead to new ways of thinking about basic emotion. For example, 4- to 9-year-old children in the United States tend to describe prototypical facial poses of disgust as anger, suggesting that translating the world into basic categories of emotions requires some learning (Widen & Russell, 2010); synchronous emotional exchanges between parents and infants may be an early teacher (Feldman, 2007). There are quirky aspects to the expressive components of faces that require explanation. For instance, expressions of extreme pleasure—specifically, pleasure produced by orgasm—are nearly indistinguishable from expressions of extreme pain when facial affect units are compared using the Facial Affect Coding System (Fernández-Dols, Carrera, & Crivelli, 2011; cf. Hughes & Nicholson, 2008). Apparently, displays of ecstasy and excruciating pain occupy adjacent positions on the signal configuration dial but opposite ends on any approach/avoidance or pleasant/ unpleasant dimension (see Figure 2.2). This puzzle seems not well explained by the current categorical model of emotion and could supply theorists interested in dimensional models of affect opportunities to map it.1 Different kinds of laughter, for example, have emotional meanings mapped slightly better by dimensions than categories (Szameitat et al., 2009). Similarly, dimensional rather than categorical construal of emotion may aid in understanding anger, a drive state in which the motivational component, approach, is conceptually separable from its

Wilhelm Max Wundt (1897) proposed that emotions could be described by three dimensions: “pleasurable versus unpleasurable,” “arousing versus subduing,” and “strain versus relaxation.”

Caroline F. Keating

B. A.

FIGURE 2.2. Pain or pleasure? The elements of facial expression in response to extreme pain and extreme sexual pleasure overlap. Picture A: male pleasure; Picture B: male pain; Picture C: female pleasure; Picture D: female pain. Reprinted from “Sex Differences in the Assessment of Pain Versus Sexual Pleasure Facial Expressions,” by S. M. Hughes and S. E. Nicholson, 2008, Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2, p. 297. Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association.

(negative) valence (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009), and whose facial expression is most often confused with that of disgust, which signals avoidance. Expression is trying to tell us something about the nature of emotion that we do not yet understand.

Approaches Emphasizing Communication Processes Scholarly traditions that emphasized communication as an interactive process unleashed expression from emotion categories. Those attracted to studying 26

nonverbal communication as social process included a new wave of linguists and an array of neo-Darwinian psychologists bent on escaping the constraints of reinforcement theory (see Figure 2.1). Who would have imagined that researchers studying human language from a cultural point of view and others keen on cross-species analyses would end up at roughly the same place—not at the same theoretical table but at least at the same data buffet? Such was the hunger for exploring the social nature of human interaction in the “back-to-nature” 1960s.

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication

System-Theory Approaches to Interaction A few rogue linguists, some inspired by Goffman’s work, were early converts to the idea that meaning could be extracted from interactional, nonverbal behavior. The idea became popular with structural linguists who, from a strictly cultural point of view, had adopted a systems-theory approach to communication in the 1950s. At Stanford, anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Ray L. Birdwhistell and, later, psychiatrist Albert E. Scheflen, embraced this new, holistic perspective on human interaction (Scheflen, 1972, 1974). Frustrated by linguists for whom communication meant only words, Scheflen (1974) expressed the obvious: “We could not find meaning in words, any more than we could find consciousness in a nerve cell or love in a gonad” (p. 2). Scheflen’s angst fueled his informal but insightful analyses of nonverbal exchanges between bosses and workers, between therapists and clients, and between the romantically inclined, thereby breathing life into the study of kinesics, proxemics, and paralanguage (Scheflen, 1972, 1974). Whether these converts worked from a structural approach, seeking language-like rules for nonverbal behavior, or from an external variable approach, in which features of the communicator and situation were examined, the focus was on communication (Duncan, 1969). Contrary to many of his predecessors and cohorts (e.g., Birdwhistell, Efron, Goffman, and Hall), Scheflen’s (1972, 1974) analyses of human nonverbal communication incorporated what was known at the time about nonhuman primate communication. Similar to Sommer (1967, 1969), who analyzed the use of personal space, Scheflen saw kinship between the nonverbal behaviors that structured the social worlds of humans and other primates. In combination with culture, he viewed nonverbal communication through the lens of interactive processes. Scheflen’s synthesis was handwriting on the wall: By the 1980s and 1990s, many linguists had come to believe that face-to-face dialogue, not written texts or monologues, represented the fundamental arena within which human language evolved and could be understood (see Bavelas & Chovil, 2006). The elevation of interactive dialogue set the study of kinesics and paralanguage in motion. In fact, motion—and timing—was everything: Meaning

was imbued in split-second sequences connecting dynamic expressions and gestures with interaction sequences and dialogue. That gestures and speech co-occur seemed obvious, but what links them? Researchers deciphered patterns of nonverbal behaviors that regulated interaction (including greeting and leave-taking) and conversation (e.g., Dittmann, 1972; Duncan, 1969; Exline, 1972; Kendon, 1970). Some researchers proposed formal models, most notably equilibrium theory (Argyle & Dean, 1965) and interaction adaptation theory (e.g., Burgoon, Stern, & Dillman, 1995); their elements are evident in contemporary social-cognitive models described later in this chapter. Interactionists also recognized that the timing of gestures provided meaning on its own. An analysis of more than 1,700 gestures embedded in speech revealed that 70% of them were associated with words simply by timing and not by intrinsic meaning (Bavelas & Chovil, 2006, p. 106). Human courtship behavior is a lot about timing: Characteristics of motion, such as the speed of offset and onset of behaviors rather than the specific behaviors themselves, predict female interest in males (Grammer, Kruck, & Magnusson, 1998). Though the dots are a long way from being connected, the interactive dialogue approach reveals that nonverbal communication should be studied as a dynamic process.

Behavioral Ecology Approaches At about the same time linguists began exploring synergies between nonverbal and verbal behavior, behavioral ecologists developed dynamic-system approaches to the evolution of nonverbal communication. In true, neo-Darwinian style, signaling systems were presumed to evolve by optimizing the biological fitness of both signaler and recipient. For instance, when an aggressive chin thrust or stare makes a competitor back down, each adversary avoids the energetic costs and possible injury resulting from physical confrontation; each accrues genetic benefits. However, the engines of natural selection are dynamic. If recipients are able to detect that the signaler is bluffing, raising the ante by threatening back could win the battle of display and earn access to resources. Aspects of game theory apply: It behooves the signaler to develop 27

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convincing displays (honest or otherwise), and recipients to hone superior detection skills. These combined forces conspire to create a frequencydependent, signaling arms race in which communication skills are shaped by the habits and abilities of those most likely to be found in the social environment (Alexander, 1974; Caryl, 1979; Dawkins & Krebs, 1978; Otte, 1974). The situation is iterative; better detection encourages better signaling, and so forth, so that some mismatch between cue validity and cue utilization is expected. To remain in balance, signalers ultimately benefit from the communication, but recipients also share in the spoils. Unchaining expressions and displays from basic emotions has advantages in understanding animal and human communication. In the animal world, cowbirds combine signs of aggression with appeasement signals within a single display: First, they assertively rush at invading birds near their nests and, next, suddenly freeze in a submissivelooking, bowed head position. Invaders typically respond by preening. After a series of experimental manipulations, Rothstein (1980) determined that the appeasement elements in the signalers’ display allowed them to appraise the aggressiveness of invaders. Thus, the meaning of the display was unlocked: Cowbirds were assumed to feel neither angry nor fearful, though they acted like it. Cowbirds combined expressive elements to assess other birds’ intentions and to reconfigure their own. No wonder it is difficult to detect an “angry” bird! A confluence of signals also surfaces when humans flirt (Moore, 2010). Observations of women in bars reveals that flirting combines nonverbal signals of dominance and submissiveness that signal coyness and are likely meant to invite qualified approach. Though signs of “happiness” (smiles, laughter), “surprise” (raised brows, raised voice pitch), “contempt” (asymmetrical muscle contractions around the mouth, dismissive vocalizations) parade across flirtatious faces and bodies, the lens of emotion is not very useful in deriving the meaning of the communication. From an ecological perspective, the clearest understanding of what is being communicated is reached by figuring out its social motive—in this case, inviting qualified approach via 28

graded status signals as part of a choosey, mating strategy. Behavioral ecology view. The role of social motives is key to Fridlund’s behavioral ecology view of facial and vocal expression, which applies behavioral ecology principles to human nonverbal communication (Fridlund, 1994; Fridlund & Russell, 2006). Recently, Fridlund and Russell (2006) argued that social motives are better predictors of facial displays in real-life interactions than are emotions. For these theorists, imputing emotions is unnecessary, whereas understanding “the projected plan of action and its goal” is central to predicting the future behavior of the displayer (Fridlund & Russell, 2006, p. 311). Under this scheme, the momentary costs and benefits of signaling are taken into account, including calculation of the potential cost of honesty. “Automatic readouts” of emotion would be expected to be rare and deception much more common (Fridlund & Russell, 2006, p. 310). When social goals instead of emotions are presumed to be the primary drivers of expression, facial expressions of “emotion” are interpreted quite differently, as Table 2.1 depicts. Most behavioral ecologists and human ethologists would be more comfortable reporting the contents on the right-hand side of the table than the left. Status cues perspective. Communication patterns extracted from behavioral ecology are also central to the status cues perspective (Keating, 1985a, 1985b, 2002; see also Mazur, 1985, 2005, for his biosocial model). Status information is embedded in both static and dynamic face and body aspects in most species, including humans. Static, age-related signals in the structure and features of the face, for instance, are carriers of status information that convey dominance, which signals threat, and submissiveness, which invites approach. Sensitivity to status cues is fundamental to group-living species, as ignoring them can pose existential threats or missed opportunities. Evidence of their importance to humans comes from studies showing that threat judgments of expressionless male faces are made in less than 39 ms and automatically access speedy, high-priority (i.e., low-frequency) perceptual processing channels in the visual system (Bar, Neta, & Linz, 2006).

The Life and Times of Nonverbal Communication

TABLE 2.1 Interpretations of Facial Expressions From Emotion Category and Social Intention Points of View Facial expression program (facial expressions of emotion) “Felt” (Duchenne) smile (readout of happiness) “False” smile (feigned happiness) “Sad” face (readout of sadness) “Anger” face (readout of anger) “Leaked” anger (inhibited anger) “Fear” face (readout of fear) “Contentment” face (readout of contentment) “Contempt” face (readout of contempt) “Poker” face (suppressed emotion)

Behavioral ecology view (signification of intent and verbal equivalent) Readiness to affiliate or play (“Good to see you,” “Let’s play [keep playing],” or “Let’s be friends”) Readiness to appease (“Whatever you say,” or “I give in”) Recruitment of succor (“Take care of me,” “Hold me,” or “Look at what you [he/she] did to me”) Readiness to attack (“Back off or I’ll attack”) Conflict about attacking (“I want to attack and I don’t want to attack” or “I’m close to attacking you”) Readiness to submit or escape (“Don’t hurt me!” or “Take what you want!”) Readiness to continue current interaction (“Everything [you’re doing] is just fine”) Declaration of superiority (“I can’t even bother with you,” or “You’re not worth the trouble”) Declaration of neutrality (“I’m taking no position [on what you’re doing/saying]”)

The status cues approach assumes that static facial signals evolved to operate independently of age, as is the case for other organisms (Keating, 1985a, 2002). Thus, on any age face, pedomorphiclooking (neotenous) facial traits (e.g., large eyes, pudgy lips, and round chins) transmit qualities associated with submissiveness, including warmth, weakness, femininity, and honesty. Mature-looking facial characteristics (e.g., narrow eyes, thin lips, and square jaws) elicit attributions associated with dominance, such as strength, cunning, masculinity, and leadership. Early, cross-cultural findings for adult perceivers (Keating, Mazur, & Segall, 1981) and for U.S. preschoolers showed that perceivers selected male and female adult faces with broad jaws and receded hairlines as people who “tell others what to do” (Keating & Bai, 1986). And do they? Are these “honest” signals (Keating, 2002)? Some recent finding suggest that they are. Facial widthto-height ratios predict perceptions of competence and leadership among corporate leaders (Rule & Ambady, 2010). Fortune 500 corporate profits can be predicted from the facial widths of their chief executive officers (Wong, Ormiston, & Haselhuhn,

2011). Intriguing, correlational studies such as these have fueled a recent growth spurt in research on human, physiognomic signaling systems that is compatible with ecological approaches. The status cues perspective on human nonverbal communication also applies to dynamic signaling systems (Keating, 2011; Keating, Mazur, Segall, et al., 1981) and helps make sense of what are called the self-conscious emotions (Matsumoto et al., 2013) or the social and moral emotions (Buck & Renfro Powers, 2006). Typically included among them are pride, shame, and embarrassment, and they appear to be universal displays (Keltner, 1995; Tracy & Robins, 2008; Tracy, Shariff, Zhao, & Henrich, 2013). Each is characterized by a distinct, choreographed sequence of nonverbal expressions and postures. They have no simple link to basic emotions, but their elements are laced with status cues—specifically, slight smiles (Keating, Mazur, Segall, et al., 1981), shrugs, head cants (Costa, Menzani, & Bitti, 2001), and blushing (Gerlach, Wilhelm, Gruber, & Roth, 2001). Consequently, embarrassment and shame convey appeasement and invite approach after transgression; the goal 29

Caroline F. Keating

seems to be reentry into the group (Keltner, 1995; Martens, Tracy, & Shariff, 2012). Pride contains elements of dominance such as erect posture, which slows approach or reverses its direction; it appears to serve power motives (Keltner, 1995; Martens et al., 2012; Tracy et al., 2013). The self-conscious emotions are perhaps better thought of as expressive of status cues in the service of social motives rather than emotions per se.

Lens Model Approaches Nonverbal communication ultimately enhances reproductive fitness but serves proximate goals (e.g., for social approval or resource acquisition) in its more immediate wake. On a day-to-day basis, the art of nonverbal communication requires anticipation of the fit between signal and social context or ecology. Early functionalists such as Brunswik (1955) applied these ideas to perception and social perception (e.g., to face cues, nations). Brunswik argued that perceptual systems were adapted to their environments by expectancies established through experience in a particular environment or ecology. Probablistic functionalism meant that perception operated probabilistically; cue perception was biased toward interpretations that had worked before (e.g., Segall, Campbell, & Herskovitz, 1966). Because probabilistic judgments proved correct most of the time in particular ecologies, these perceptual habits were thought of as adaptive (Brunswik, 1955). Perceivers need only beat the odds some percentage of the time to come away with a winning, perceptual hand. Thus, a certain degree of error was to be expected in social perception; some degree of slippage was anticipated in the match-up between cue validity and cue utilization. The slippage showed when Gifford (1994) applied Brunswik’s lens model to the nonverbal communication habits of people with different personality types. Gifford first uncovered valid cues, finding that communicators who scored high on personality measurements of warmth and agreeableness frequently nodded their heads during interactions. However, when he next had naive observers judge communicators’ traits from their nonverbal behavior, he discovered that the valid cue of head nods was not the only cue they used. Observers actually 30

deployed several postural cues that were unassociated with the dispositions of communicators. It was as if observers hedged their bets when forming impressions based on nonverbal cues. The appeal of Brunswik’s model has been widespread in recent decades. Theorists have applied lens models to several nonverbal communication problems, including vocal quality signals (Scherer, 1978), rapport (Bernieri, Gillis, Davis, & Grahe, 1996), mimicry (Hess, Philippot, & Blairy, 1999), and deception (Hartwig & Bond, 2011). Because the approach has the potential to distinguish between what is expressed and what is detected, it has also been applied to emotional expression. Scherer and his colleagues applied a modified version of Brunswik’s lens model to their appraisal theory of emotion (Scherer et al., 2011; Scherer, Johnstone, & Klasmeyer, 2003). The cornerstone of their argument separates expression from its measurement, perception: Using perceptions of emotion as a ruler to measure expression of emotion, they argued, conflates the two. The modified lens model allows the signaler’s expressive behavior to be considered separately from the beholder’s perception/ inference. Unlinking them enables closer inspection of the “appraisal” processes implicated in the encoding and decoding of emotion. Based on these processing distinctions, Scherer and colleagues demonstrated that expressors (encoders) do not display, and perceivers (decoders) do not utilize, facial action units at the level of precision or reliability that theorists such as Ekman predict (Scherer et al., 2011). Nevertheless, recognition accuracy for emotions remained high. Consistent with appraisal theories of emotion, interpretation and inference seemed embedded in message processing, and the processes themselves seemed cumulative and dynamic. Appraisals are likely affected by development and culture, and future research framed by this paradigm seems directed toward testing their effects.

The Ecological Theory of Social Perception: Affordances That ecology shapes social perception is also consistent with the ecological theory of social perception developed in the 1980s (McArthur & Baron, 1983).

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Over several decades, the idea that direct perception of affordances (Gibson, 1977) could be extracted from static and dynamic nonverbal elements has been championed by Leslie A. Zebrowitz, Joanne Montepare, and their colleagues in an extensively developed series of research projects (e.g., Berry & McArthur, 1986; Liang, Zebrowitz, & Zhang, 2010; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998; Zebrowitz, 1997, 2003; Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997; Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008). Consistent with the ecological theory of perception, these researchers have argued that facial structure conveys affordances, defined as opportunities for certain types of interactions. Sensitivity or attunement to these signals, although adaptive, can be overgeneralized. In particular, affordances proffered by “age-related physical qualities” (Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998, p. 95), such as babyish facial cues, may be overgeneralized when displayed by adults and may influence impressions of social traits (Zebrowitz, Luevano, Bronstad, & Aharon, 2009). Hence, baby-faced adults are perceived as having characteristics associated with babies: They are judged to be dependent, weak, and kind, whereas mature facial appearances make individuals look dominant, strong, and cunning (Berry & McArthur, 1986; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998; Zebrowitz, 1997). So potent are these perceptual habits that they can become self-fulfilling prophecies, as targets conform to social expectations created by their physical appearances (Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008; see also Chapter 10, this handbook). The affordances perspective has a fine record of research with a long reach. Researchers from this perspective have continued to unearth evidence to support their views by launching developmental, cross-species, and cross-cultural studies (e.g., Zebrowitz et al., 2011, 2012). They have incorporated connectionist modeling techniques (Zebrowitz, Fellous, Mignault, & Andreoletti, 2003; Zebrowitz et al., 2009) and have used dynamic as well as static stimuli. They have reached across from their home domain of social cognition and perception to emotion, lending support to the thesis of Marsh, Adams, and Kleck (2005) that expressions of emotion were designed to mimic age-related aspects of facial structure (Zebrowitz, Kikuchi, & Fellous,

2007). They have also suggested that appearances of facial dominance may result from the overgeneralization of facial likenesses to anger expressions (Zebrowitz, Kikuchi, & Fellous, 2010). Recently, the affordances perspective has been a useful tool in the development of a model of rapport, conceptualized as an optimal, harmonious flow revealed during interaction and very much dependent on nonverbal behavior (Tickle-Degnen, 2006).

Social-Cognitive Perspectives on Nonverbal Communication Ecological perspectives on nonverbal communication include functional, social-cognitive approaches that identify proximate social goals or motives as the energizers of nonverbal communication. Social motives are construed as powerful drive states that set in motion behavior, emotion, and cognitions aimed at satisfying basic social needs (Fiske, 2010). These fundamental human needs or goals generally include belonging, controlling, and enhancing self, depending on whom you read (Baumeister, 1993; Bugental, 2000; Fiske, 2010). The development of these needs and the behavioral strategies used to satisfy them are ultimately linked to biological fitness (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Buss, 1999). Rosenfeld (1965, 1966) conducted early, elegant, experimental demonstrations coupling nonverbal communication with social goals. In a series of studies, he simply instructed participants to interact with unfamiliar others (sometimes a confederate), and he gave them different social goals to be enacted nonverbally. Sometimes the social goal required seeking approval (“get the other person to like you”), and sometimes it did not (“let the other person know you do not want to be friends with them”). Participants were chameleon-like; their gestures, postures, expressions, and use of interpersonal space were transformed by the explicit, social goal operating at the time. They “knew” precisely how to nonverbally present themselves to successfully negotiate the differing social terrains. Developmental research suggests that nonverbal social competencies such as these are learned early in life (Saarni, 1989; Saarni & Weber, 1999). Throughout life, nonverbal communication is essential to self-presentational goals, whether heartfelt, deceptive (DePaulo, 1992; 31

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Feldman, 2009; Keating, 2006), or self-deceptive (von Hippel & Trivers, 2011). Patterson (1999, 2006) applied some of this thinking to his parallel process model of nonverbal communication. This model attempts to expose the ways controlled and automatic processes operate in tandem in the production of nonverbal communication. According to Patterson, goal-related processes at or below the level of consciousness routinely trigger the sending and receiving nonverbal messages. Nonverbal responses and judgments made from other’s nonverbal behavior occur in parallel, efficiently “managed” by automatic processes during interaction. Patterson’s model suggests that cognitive and affective filters operate differently for individuals high and low in traits such as social anxiety or self-monitoring. It also suggests when and how cognitive resources would be redirected, for example, under different status conditions or for different age groups or in different cultures. To date, components of the parallel processing model have heuristic value, but specific hypotheses await formulation and testing.

approach may leave worthy alternative models in the dark (Jost, 2013). Exceptions to singular approaches have value. Andersen et al. (1998) tested the explanatory power of three different theoretical approaches to immediacy behavior. Research on whether different kinds of laughter convey different emotions was tested under two emotion models, one that classified laughter into basic categories and the other that used dimensions. Each showed some success, but one showed more success than the other (Szameitat et al., 2009). Sacco and Hugenberg (2009) blended basic emotions with morphological cues on the pallet of the face, revealing important interactive effects of emotion and status cues. Empirical approaches such as these have the potential to reveal the relative strengths and weaknesses of theories and models. More specific lessons derived from the theories and models reviewed here include the following: ■■

SUMMARY AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Two traditions of theory and research were identified in this chapter, one emphasizing emotions inherent in expressions, and the other emphasizing communication processes. Each spawned valuable contributions to understanding human nonverbal communication. The emphasis on emotion has achieved relatively precise neuroanatomical measurement and classification of expressions as well as an understanding of their evolution, distinctive qualities, and underlying biological substrates. The emphasis on communication reveals a cross-species logic to signaling systems that is not frozen in time. It suggests how interactive, nonverbal processes can lead to flawed communication. Though each tradition has added value to the enterprise of nonverbal communication science, they can both be faulted for proceeding in ways that do not make likely credible tests of alternative possibilities outside their theoretical domain. Decades ago, William McGuire warned that focus on testing particular hypotheses from a singular 32

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From interactionists comes the perspective that nonverbal communication should be studied in its natural habitat—social interaction—and that clusters of signals and responses should be mapped across space and time as a dynamic flow. Increasingly sophisticated technologies (e.g., high-speed, high-definition digital recording; computer software that alters and/or records motion stimuli; high-speed cameras with built-in motion detection; virtual reality headsets; even Google glasses) make this feasible. Social-cognitive approaches offer that conscious and nonconscious behaviors and goals shape nonverbal processes during interaction. Evidence of nonconscious processes that can be temporally linked to behavior is possible through recent advances in measuring physiological and brain activity in moving subjects. Lens perspectives as well as the Gibsonian affordances position contribute an understanding of the mechanisms by which nonverbal communication systems “short” us, presumably in predictable ways as determined by ecologies and environments. Experimentally induced virtual environments could be used to test competing propositions generated by these models.

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■■

Both the basic emotions and Gibsonian affordances theoretical positions confirm that a good argument is a thorough one. Each has harnessed the power of cross-cultural, cross-species, developmental, and multidisciplinary approaches to make their case.

Nonverbal communication is no longer the “disdained, nameless, orphan child of psychology” (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996, p. xviii) that Burgoon described it to be in 1980. Today, it belongs to the family of important, human psychological processes. However, if nonverbal communication is so important to our species, why are imperfections built into its systems? Why do we make the mistakes we do when judging the feelings, personalities, intentions, lies, and truths of conspecifics? Only brief samples of nonverbal behavior, thin slices lasting just seconds, are needed to create impressions of one another (Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000). Once created, perceivers seem generally bent on confirming what they already believe—even if it is wrong. For example, thin slices lead to consensus about the likely trustworthiness and altruism of others (Fetchenhauer, Groothuis, & Pradel, 2010; Todorov, Pakrashi, & Oosterhof, 2009; van’t Wout & Sanfey, 2008; Willis & Todorov, 2006); the trouble is that the impressions themselves are not always to be trusted (Rule, Krendl, Ivcevic, & Ambady, 2013). Future research should investigate error patterns and imprecision in nonverbal communication to better understand its complex role in human sociability. From the Gibsonian affordances platform, error is the result of overgeneralization; perceivers perseverate in making inferences based on attunements appropriate in other contexts (age, anger). Lens model theorists argue that the sloppy, probabilistic shaping of encoding and decoding systems is to blame for mistakes. Critical tests between these theoretical points of view have yet to distinguish their relative, explanatory merits. Though both offer ideas about how the social–perceptual mechanisms of nonverbal expressive systems might go off-kilter, they do not address why. What is in it for signalers and perceivers, and do they ever wise up?

Basic emotion theorists would be tempted to challenge the very premise of all that error with piles of data showing how good people are at identifying basic emotions. They would be partly right: Basic, prototypical emotion facial expressions generate impressive agreement and consistency in how they are perceived across cultures. However, expressers around the world rarely display them in actual, social situations. From a behavioral ecology perspective, constraints on precision in messaging would be expected (i.e., Fridlund & Russell, 2006; Keating, 2002): Why would individuals put all their expressive cards on the table and tell others the full truth of how they feel, what they intend, or what capacities they truly have? Is precision an advantage (see M. L. Smith, Cottrell, Gosselin, & Schyns, 2005)? Why not appear sort of angry or kind of friendly, like those birds and flirtatious women described earlier? Graded signals such as these are prevalent in the communication patterns of nonhuman species (not to mention in human politics). Expressions signal intentions (Adams, Ambady, Macrae, & Kleck, 2006), and nuanced, nonverbal messages that leave open multiple possibilities could be an advantage in negotiating the social world—disguise and conquer, at least to a point. Moreover, inaccuracy in expressions is strategic: Being a “hard read”—especially to “outsiders”— might lend an evolutionary advantage, both proximately and ultimately. This view predicts ingroup advantages to encoding and decoding nonverbal signals, as is evident in humans (e.g., Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) and as is seen in the special, nonverbal “dialects” that develop among family groups in other species (Briefer & McElligott, 2012)—an animal version of code-switching, perhaps.2 Thus, discrepancies and error produced by what appears to be imprecision in nonverbal communication may be part of the design and worthy of future study. THE IMPORTANCE OF QUESTIONS My early plan as a graduate student in the 1970s was to begin the study of nonverbal communication

Interestingly, cross-species communication might be immune to such defenses, as the dog’s ability to read human emotion seems to suggest (Andics, Gácsi, Faragó, Kis, & Miklósi, 2014).

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by photographing a range of emotions on the visages of everyday people during their everyday lives. I departed for the field with a borrowed 35-mm camera and telephoto lens to capture what everyday life dished out in terms of emotion. Funny thing was, I could not find any. My lens captured only one instance of true emotion—the stricken face of a man standing outside his burning house, his dog still inside. The rest of my images consisted of exaggerated expressions, diminished expressions, neutralized expressions, or expressions that no human could read. Once in a while, I would see flashes of the emotional expressions depicted in research manuals on the faces of the psychiatric patients at the hospital where I volunteered. I learned the following lessons: Studying public expression would teach me little about emotion but much about communication; observing raw emotion would tell more about emotion than communication. Which approach is best depends on what the question is, as philosophers have noted (Dennett, 1978; Toulmin, 1972).

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Scherer, K. R., Clark-Polner, E., & Mortillaro, M. (2011). In the eye of the beholder? Universality and cultural specificity in the expression and perception of emotion. International Journal of Psychology, 46, 401–435. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/00207594.2011.626049 Scherer, K. R., & Ellgring, H. (2007). Multimodal expression of emotion: Affect programs or componential appraisal patterns? Emotion, 7, 158–171. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ 1528-3542.7.1.158 Scherer, K. R., Johnstone, T., & Klasmeyer, G. (2003). Vocal expression of emotion. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, & H. H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp. 433–456). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Todorov, A., Pakrashi, M., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2009). Evaluating faces on trustworthiness after minimal time exposure. Social Cognition, 27, 813–833. http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/soco.2009.27.6.813 Tomkins, S. S. (1962). Affect, imagery, and consciousness: Vol. 1. The positive affects. New York, NY: Springer. Tomkins, S. S. (1963). Affect, imagery, and consciousness: Vol. 2. The negative affects. New York, NY: Springer. Toulmin, S. (1972). Human understanding: The collective use and evolution of concepts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2008). The nonverbal expression of pride: Evidence for cross-cultural recognition. Journal of Personality and Social 41

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Part II

FACTORS OF INFLUENCE

Chapter 3

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication Mark G. Frank and Allison Z. Shaw

Scientists tend to concur that nonverbal communication is phylogentically older than verbal communication. Although scientists debate whether language emerged 400,000 years ago (Johansson, 2011) or 200,000 years ago (McCrone, 1991), or whether it was an impoverished version of our modern language (P. Lieberman, 2008) or in fact was expressed like Sign Language through gestures (Corballis, 2002; McNeill, 1992), it is clear that our human ancestors were navigating the planet before the advent of spoken language (up to 6 million years ago; White et al., 2009). Language of course is efficient, flexible, and adaptable; allows one to represent objects and concepts symbolically; and can span space and time. One merely needs to try to communicate a request for future action—for example, please send me a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation that explains fractals next Thursday—using only nonverbal communication to understand the efficiency of verbal communication. In fact, the superiority of a complex language as a tool for communication is what some scholars attribute the success of the less robust and weaker Homo sapiens over the more robust and stronger Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East (P. Lieberman, 2007). Despite the capability of complex language, the phylogenetically older nonverbal communication system still exists and thrives in human beings today. Although we might argue that nonverbal communication is a definitive signaling system, designed to send messages like spoken language, we intend on expanding the discussion in this chapter to show that nonverbal cues can communicate a

wider variety of states, including those more associated with health and reproductive fitness. The actual “signs,” “signals,” and “symbols” from these states are not as clear as to whether they evolved as part of a signaling system or just happen to co-occur and became useful to the observant. It was only in the last 150 years that scientists began to address systematically the role of biology in nonverbal communication, starting with Duchenne de Boulogne’s (1862/1990) mellifluous notations concerning differentiating smiles that are “put into play by the sweet emotions of the soul” from those that “obey the will” (p. 72). We recognize that many of the authors in this handbook have tied their review chapters on faces, bodies, voices, odors, and so forth into various biological substrates. Historically, this integration has not always been the case for nonverbal communication (see Chapter 1, this handbook), and thus we consider it a strength of this book. In this chapter, we hope to flip the framework from that of examining nonverbal communication through each individual channel (e.g., face, body, eyes) into that of examining the role of evolution on human survival and reproduction, and how the process of evolution may be reflected in the various nonverbal signs and signals emitted by people. It will become apparent that some of these nonverbal communicative cues may have been selected as messaging systems with specific meanings, whereas other cues coevolved with other internal states that one can argue have survival value but without seeming to have a clear message plan or meaning. One such mechanism may be to signal health or other

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-003 APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, D. Matsumoto, H. C. Hwang, and M. G. Frank (Editors-in-Chief) Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

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states that make one desirable to reproduce with (known as reproductive fitness). However, we warn that for most of these nonverbal cues, we can only deduce whether they were selected for as messages or simply indicators of other internal states. EVOLUTION OVERVIEW The basic premise of Darwin’s (1859) theory of natural selection is that the genes that are responsible for characteristics that ensure survival are passed on to the next generation. This inheritance is accomplished through a number of processes: First, more individuals are produced than an environment can typically support, thus competition emerges; second, genes vary within populations through mating and random mutations and those genes—and their resultant characteristics—are selected for because they are conducive to winning the competition within a particular environment ensuring the survival of the gene carrier; and third, those individuals who have survived are in a position to procreate, and then they have the opportunity to pass those genes onto the next generation. Genes and their resultant characteristics that hinder adaptation to a particular environment are typically not passed on due to the gene carrier not surviving long enough to procreate. It is because of these processes that Darwin called it natural (nature) selection (the natural environment dictated what worked for survival, not any grand plan or possible Supreme Being). Thus, conspecifics with slow, inefficient communication systems that do not permit speedy warning against predators are eliminated by such predators as they are easy prey. Conspecifics with speedier communication systems, on the other hand, permit many members of the group to escape the predator through an early warning; thus, group members survive and then later reproduce. However, fleeing from predators is just one survival task; organisms must also compete and fight, must also feed to live, and must also be in position to procreate more often than other conspecifics to increase the odds of their particular set of genes surviving through to the next generation. The implication of this system is that there are two superordinate “tasks” that evolution requires 46

to pass down genes to the next generation. First, and foremost, is survival to the age of reproduction. Survival past the reproductive age is somewhat less relevant, with the exception being the possibility of additional caretakers/hands within a society (e.g., Caspari & Lee, 2004), which may facilitate the survival of the prereproductive-age individuals who share some of the genes of the caregiver (e.g., nephews/nieces). The second, and entirely dependent on the first, is reproductive fitness—meaning the reproductive age of survivors whose characteristics are most desirable are vied for and thus reproduce at a greater rate, which increases the frequency of their genes within a population, which, in turn, makes those genes more likely to appear in ensuing generations.

Where Nonverbal Communication Fits Nonverbal communication is instrumental in both these tasks. Broadly speaking, nonverbal communication helps to ensure the primary task of survival to reproduction by expressing danger (fear), imminent attack (anger), contamination (disgust), needed attention (distress), and novelty (surprise). Thus, members of the group can be forewarned of danger, can sidestep a conflict, can avoid a potentially poisonous food, and can attend to members in distress. Note that the word “expressing” connotes communication, and it is communication that allows for cooperation and coordinated behaviors. Nonverbal communication also facilitates reproductive fitness by indicating who to affiliate with (friend or kin); potential approachability or danger from others; and health, fertility, and strength/dominance. Regardless of whether these behaviors are deliberate expressions, or aftereffects from other biological processes, they still communicate information and appear to influence the behavior of others. We argue that regardless of whether these immutable characteristics and behaviors were selected for, or at least were not detrimental to the survival and reproductive fitness of a species, these characteristics and behaviors communicate relevant information for survival and reproductive fitness, and they facilitate decision making regarding initiating, maintaining, and terminating interactions.

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The extent to which nonverbal communication is adaptive to the world of today is likely happenstance, as the vast majority of human existence on the planet has been in the hunter–gatherer world of more than 100,000 years ago (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). That does not mean that nonverbal communication is not adaptive in today’s world; it only means that the behaviors we see today did not evolve to meet the challenges of today such as electronic communication. However, nonverbal cues studied today can provide insight into the most stringent challenges for survival and reproduction throughout the history of humanity. Thus, we can argue that the emotion of fear evolved to motivate humans to flee danger. It can be argued that in the ancient world, threats to survival that induced fear were mainly predators and fellow humans, but that same emotion (i.e., fear) turns out to be helpful in motivating us to flee things that did not exist in the ancient world such as handguns (e.g., Öhman & Mineka, 2001). In other words, although emotions today may serve proximal needs, we speculate on the distal causes for such behaviors.

Signs, Signals, Symbols, and Their Voluntariness To proceed, we must distinguish signs from signals from symbols, and for the sake of consistency, we start in a manner similar to Haviland-Jones, Wilson, and Freyberg (see Chapter 14, this handbook). They defined signs as part of an experience, or the physical reaction to a stimulus, absent of meaning or information. Signals, alternatively, communicate information of one’s experience or reaction to a stimulus. From a communication point of view, such a definition makes no claim as to the design, or intentionality, of the sign as a message to others; however, typically, signs are not intentionally produced by a sender. Signals, on the other hand, at times, are intentionally construed. Sometimes, signs are produced without intentional meaning; however, receivers infer information from the sign. Later in this section, we discuss emotional signs (e.g., raising eyebrows out of fear) and how they can be interpreted as signals (e.g., there is something to be afraid of present) by others, although the producer involuntarily produced the sign with no conscious

intention of it being a signal to others. Alternatively, signals can also be intentionally produced. For example, in the context of nonverbal behavior, deliberately fabricating signs associated with particular emotional states (e.g., anger) to signal a different but not felt emotional state (e.g., happiness) is a well-studied instance of intentionally produced signaling (i.e., deception). Finally, Haviland-Jones et al. defined symbols as signs external to the individual used to connote symbolic information. Extending our example using fear, the sign (e.g., raising one’s eyebrows out of fear) can both signal information (e.g., danger) and represent symbolic information (e.g., Run!). The determination of a sign, signal, and symbol is often times in the eyes of the beholder, making it challenging at times to determine when a sign is a signal or a symbol. Thus, in pulling back the window of observation from Haviland-Jones et al.’s (see Chapter 14, this handbook) phenomenon of study (odor) to nonverbal communication in general, it appears that we run into an inference problem—voluntary versus involuntary actions. In the case of odor, Haviland-Jones et al. have pointed out that much of it—the sign—is involuntary; they have identified some exceptional situations when individuals in some cultures will consume products to change their odors—the signal—or the less exceptional practice of applying substances to change odor (e.g., perfume; the symbol). However, individuals cannot consciously make their natural odors change without some sort of exogenous agent. In nonverbal communication in general, there are some behaviors where the individual can move in a deliberate way that can almost perfectly mimic an involuntary movement; for example, one can smile and fool others into thinking one is experiencing enjoyment when in fact one is not (e.g., Frank, Ekman, & Friesen, 1993). However, such an instance is endogenously driven action, unlike the odor change scenarios described. Finally, we organize the sections by those nonverbal signs, signals, and symbols that may have aided survival (i.e., dealing with the immediate challenges of life) and those dealing more with reproductive fitness. We look at the processes underneath all three, and we examine how they are expressed in the faces, eyes, voices, bodies, and even odors of 47

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people. These nonverbal cues can be dynamic and quick, as in a facial expression; can be slow, as in signs of aging or odors; or can be static, as in one’s neutral facial appearance or body shape (cf. Ekman, 1978). We realize that some of these cues might be seen as dynamic or slow, or slow and static; thus, their categorization may overlap, but it will provide a starting point upon which to examine the importance of nonverbal communication in evolution, and evolution in nonverbal communication. Regardless, they are all nonverbal and are likely selected for because they aided our survival or increased our chances of reproducing. SURVIVAL Our modern, suburban lives are designed to reduce the dangers of life; we have traffic lights, law enforcement agencies, laws concerning food purity, and so forth. Such was not the case in the ancient world. Analyses of the skeletons of humans found in ancient cities suggest that close to 30% of males died from homicide (LeBlanc, 2003). Even up until the 1970s, anthropologists noted that in preliterate, indigenous rain forest people, up to 25% of the males died from homicide (e.g., the Yanamamo people; Chagnon, 1988). Recent summaries of human violence have argued convincingly that humans have become less violent with the passage of time (Pinker, 2011); thus, regardless of the extent to which we believe we live in a dangerous world today, it is not nearly as dangerous as the ancient world. It seems two characteristics of human beings are most amenable to our survival. One is having a hard-wired response system that motivates behavior without much contemplation; thus, individuals can respond quickly and efficiently to potential threats (Tooby & Cosmides, 2005). The other is living in groups, which permits aid when ill, allies in war, shared resources such as food, and remote warnings for danger. Both of these characteristics are embodied in emotion.

Emotion Matsumoto and Hwang (2013) defined emotions as “transient, bio-psycho-social reactions to events that 48

have consequences for our welfare and potentially require immediate action” (p. 17). Thus, emotions are intimately tied to our biology, affect our thinking, and have implications for those around us. Emotions affect our autonomic nervous system (ANS), which by altering our heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow, and sweat glands produces the sensations we know as emotions (Levenson, Ekman, & Friesen, 1990). Specific emotions appear to have specific patterns of ANS activity (Ekman, Levenson, & Friesen, 1983), and these patterns seem to be universal, as research has revealed that the Minangkabau people—a matrilineal, Muslim society in Indonesia—show the same ANS patterns for the same emotions as university students in the United States (Levenson, Ekman, Heider, & Friesen, 1992). In other words, the ANS reorganizes the body’s priorities to enable quick action, and these patterns are found in all humans studied to date. Moreover, other work has shown that these emotions also have distinct central nervous system patterns (reviewed in Phan, Wager, Taylor, & Liberzon, 2002; Vytal & Hamann, 2010). Such patterns of emotional response would allow us to presume that these reactions are part of the wiring of our species and must have been helpful to our survival and thus selected for. We also add that research shows that these emotions are not necessarily exclusive to humans; research has shown that chimpanzees, rats, and other mammals also have emotions and corresponding brain circuits (e.g., Panksepp, 1998). The terminology scientists use for animals is often slightly different than what we use for humans—for example, panic and attack are terms used for animals, whereas fear and anger are the analogous terms used for humans—and this terminology shift is likely due to scientists having to use nomenclature that describes the animal’s behavior that is presumed to be driven by emotions, as animals have not been as forthcoming as humans in describing their inner states and experiences. Regardless, the basic emotion patterns are similar. The other aspect of the definition that is important from an evolution point of view is that emotions are reactions to events. Of course, in animals that have memories, the recall of a past event that had triggered an emotion in the past can retrigger an emotion, and the imagining of

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

some yet-to-occur event can also trigger an emotion. Regardless, at their core, emotions are at the interface of organisms with their environment (Ekman, 2003; LeDoux, 1996; Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013; Panksepp, 1998). This interaction comes into play in more detail later when we discuss the signs, signals, and symbols of these emotions. Research shows that there are anywhere from five to nine “basic” human emotions, with most researchers settling on seven—anger, contempt, disgust, fear, enjoyment, sadness/distress, and surprise (e.g., Ekman, 2003). Some scholars include interest (e.g., Izard, 1977); others include embarrassment (e.g., Keltner, 1995), pride (Tracy & Robins, 2008), or shame and guilt (e.g., Keltner & Buswell, 1997). Regardless, these seven emotions are referred to as basic because they are universal in physiological activation pattern, and their signals are recognized across our species (Ekman, 1993). Universality and the physiological mediators are just two criteria for emotions being evolutionarily selected for; we would also expect to see some form in lower animals, and we would expect to see the emotion develop regardless of social learning opportunities (e.g., in those born blind, which research evidence supports; e.g., Galati, Miceli, & Sini, 2001; Galati, Sini, Schmidt, & Tinti, 2003; Matsumoto & Willingham, 2009). Ekman and Cordaro (2011) went as far as to stipulate up to 12 criteria for determining the evolutionary underpinnings of an emotion; these include distinctive universal signals; distinctive physiology; automatic appraisal, tuned to distinctive universals in antecedent events; distinctive appearance developmentally; presence in other primates; quick onset; brief duration; unbidden occurrence; distinctive thoughts, memories, and images; and distinctive subjective experience. Regardless, we would need to be able to make an argument that the presence of that emotion would facilitate the survival of the organism, and the absence of the emotion would be detrimental to the organism. Therefore, an argument can be made for the survival facilitating ability of each of the basic seven emotions by what it does to the body to facilitate an action (action tendency) that might save an organism (Frijda, 1986). For example, anger moves blood to the upper body and

increases muscle tension to prepare to fight and/ or attack; disgust slows the heart rate and prepares the body to eject some ingested item, or stops them from ingesting altogether; fear moves blood to the large muscles of the legs to facilitate escape and increases sweat to improve the grip in hands and feet; and so forth (see Levenson, 1999). Moreover, Tooby and Cosmides (2005) argued further for emotions as the evolutionarily functional interface of individuals and the environment. Specifically, emotions that evolved in the ancestral environment toward events that recurred, which required coordinating the body actions to overcome the event, had a repeated and consistent pattern of action that also signaled when it was engaged—and that not having such a reaction could cost the individual his or her life, which of course prevents procreation. Only those individuals with such behavioral response patterns would survive to reproduce and, thus, distribute this reaction pattern across the species. Given that these observations can be made in other mammals as well suggests the biological and evolutionary roots of emotion. Signs—Face. Given the emphasis on nonverbal communication, we turn our focus to the signs that accompany emotional reactions. Ekman (1999) suggested that these signs are important because they signal important information to conspecifics; this information might indicate danger, or impending attack, and so forth. Many of the physiological signs of these emotions are not so easy to see; it is hard to detect a change in heart rate or slight increase in sweat by simply observing another person. Occasionally, one can see change in blood pressure through changes in skin color due to flushing in the face of light-complexioned individuals (as with anger or embarrassment; Keltner, 1995), but except under the most extreme circumstances, these signs are hard to detect. However, the predominant nonverbal sign of an emotion is the movement of muscles in the face into particular configurations for each emotion; the configuration is called the facial expression (see Chapter 10, this handbook, for the mechanics of the musculature underlying the facial expression; note that the facial muscles are the only muscles in the 49

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body that connect bone to skin; thus, one purpose must be to move that skin in a way to be seen by others). Darwin (1872/1998) identified three principles underlying the production of facial expressions that underscore their evolutionary roots; first, he discussed the principle of serviceable habits, which argued that the precise configuration of the expression served the purpose of the particular emotion. He also discussed the principle of antithesis, which argued that for some emotions, their adaptation was to appear opposite, or at least distinctly different, to another emotion so as to not confuse the two. His third principle was that of nerve force, which meant that the impulse for the emotion expression is involuntary. All three of these principles ultimately were considered essential to survival and, thus, were selected for evolutionarily. The principle of serviceable habits works along the same ideas as the ANS activation, where the physiology facilitates the behavioral action (e.g., Levenson, 1999). Thus, in the emotion of anger, the eyebrows lower, and the upper eyelids raise in a glare; this response narrows the focus onto the object or individual that needs to be removed or potentially attacked. Likewise, the lips narrow, which functions to move them out of the way so that a bite can be executed. In contrast, fear raises the eyebrows and raises the upper eye lids; this response permits more information to enter the perceptual realm of the individual to enable the maximum information processing so as to make the best assessment of any potential danger. Disgust involves the wrinkling of the nose and raising of the upper lip; this response is purported to reduce the sensory information of a potentially sickening ingestible item. Recent work has supported many of these assertions. For example, when individuals pose a fear expression, the amount of sinus cavity surface area (a marker of potential sensory input) expands compared to an individual’s neutral, nonexpressive face. Furthermore, a posed disgust face reduces the sinus cavity surface area, thus reducing sensory input, just as Darwin had predicted (Susskind et al., 2008). Anecdotally, it also appears that making a disgust face while having food in one’s mouth moves the food to the front of the mouth, thus making it easier to eject. This reaction may account for why 50

the first author had to reestablish his nonverbal expertise credentials with his laughing wife after their infant children, who made disgust expressions when introduced to new foods, requested more of the food after swallowing. It seemed that the children were testing it, and the disgust face permitted testing a smaller sensory sample in preparation to eject it if it was potentially distasteful. The principle of antithesis, however, works opposite to serviceable habits. Darwin (1872/1998) used the example of the dog in attack mode; the dog’s hair raises at the shoulder, and its ears and tail go erect (to make it look bigger); its lips curl to display the teeth as weapons as well as to permit effective biting. However, the dog who is showing submission (the opposite of attack), as when greeting its pack leader (or human owner), does not raise its hair; instead, its shoulders, ears, and tail go low, thus making the dog look smaller. This behavior is the antithesis of attack, and its appearance is clearly distinct from attack, thus making such a posture very hard to confuse with the attack posture. Similarly, the appearance of the human smile may be a function of this antithesis principle; the lips turn up versus down in anger, fear, and sadness. In fact, when judging posed expressions of emotion, the smile is least confused with other expressions (e.g., Ekman et al., 1987) and also is the expression that can be seen from the farthest distance away (Hager & Ekman, 1979). Others have expanded this idea of antithesis to argue that it not only applies to the direct comparison of happiness (lip corners up) and sadness (lip corners down) but also to anger (eye brows down) and fear (eyebrows up; Weisfeld & Goetz, 2013). This conjecture is confirmed by analyses of confusions in judgments, where anger and fear, much like happy and sad, are rarely confused with each other (Ekman et al., 1987; Matsumoto, 1993). The principle of nerve force argues that these expressions, when driven by emotion, are involuntary reactions and, in fact, are part of the entire coherent emotional reaction that features the ANS, central nervous system, and body and vocal actions (see Chapter 10, this handbook). This principle is supported by 74 published studies between 1972 and 2007 that have demonstrated the link between

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

the ANS or central nervous system and facial expressions of emotion (Matsumoto, Keltner, Shiota, O’Sullivan, & Frank, 2008). Darwin further argued that due to this nerve force, one could not fully mimic a genuine emotional expression, as some facial muscles are harder to move deliberately. That also meant facial muscles will be harder to inhibit if they are activated; specifically, Darwin (1872/1998) said the following: Some actions ordinarily associated through habit with certain states of mind may be partially repressed through the will, and in such cases the muscles which are least under the separate control of the will are the most liable still to act, causing movements which we recognize as expressive. In certain other cases the checking of one habitual movement requires other slight movements; and these are likewise expressive. (p. 34) Thus, emotional facial expressions are signs, and a plethora of research has repeatedly high agreement rates across all cultures between particular facial expressions and their emotion sign (see Chapter 10, this handbook, for a thorough review of this work). However, Darwin also has left open the door here that facial expressions are not just signs of an emotion, and thus a particular behavior is likely to follow, but can also be mimicked without being felt (activating the physiological response typical of that emotion), thus moving them into the realm of a deliberate, consciously chosen signal, which is addressed later. Signs—Body. The other behaviors that support the action tendency of the emotion can also be detected by observers. The body shows signs, such that the movement of angry individuals is different from sad, fearful, or joyful individuals (Atkinson, Dittrich, Gemmell, & Young, 2004; Crane & Gross, 2007; Montepare, Goldstein, & Clausen, 1987; Wallbott, 1998). Thus, anger is associated with more forward body lean and greater arm swing (attack), whereas fear has shorter steps and less forward lean (to retreat; de Meijer, 1989). One can even extend Darwin’s principle of antithesis to body action; the

body expression of pride (which we can infer also conveys dominance) features upward body posture and arms/hands upward, whereas defeat or shame features the body bent downward (Tracy, Shariff, & Cheng, 2010; Weisfeld & Dillon, 2012). However, we do suggest some caution here, as the majority of these studies asked individuals to pose these emotions. Signs—Voice. Other signs of emotion involve the voice. Due to the nature of human emotion, research on vocal expression of emotions parallels many of the same issues involving facial expressions of emotion. First off, other animals feature vocalizations that communicate threats, danger, nature of relationships, as well as their emotional states (e.g., Kitchen, Cheney, & Seyfarth, 2003). Darwin (1872/1998) also described many paralinguistic correlates of various emotional states. However, unlike the muscles in the face, which receive direct nerve impulses to produce the expression (see Chapter 10, this handbook), the larynx and sound production apparatus of humans do not receive direct nerve connections from the subcortical structures of the brain associated with emotion (see Chapter 11, this handbook). These connections tend to innervate the structures that surround the sound-making apparatus. Thus, researchers encounter a conundrum—like that in facial research, voice research shows greater than chance agreement in judging emotion from the voice but without as clear a consensus as to the vocal characteristics of each emotion (see review by Scherer, 2003). Most studies show increase in pitch for anger and fear, but the universal signature for each emotion is elusive (again, see Chapter 11, this handbook). Despite that, a comprehensive review of the literature showed that the vocal signs of anger, fear, happiness, and sadness were judged accurately both within and across cultures (Juslin & Laukka, 2003). For both within and across cultures, the agreement pattern was the same—the highest levels of agreement were for the vocal expressions of anger and sadness, and the lowest level was for happiness—which is opposite to what researchers note in judgment studies of the face, as per what the principle of antithesis would suggest (Juslin & Laukka, 2003). Although anger, fear, happiness, 51

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and sadness have received the most study, smaller numbers of studies have examined agreement for emotions—such as disgust, contempt, boredom, embarrassment, guilt, and shame—and many shades of positive emotion, including amusement, relief, contentment, and so forth. However, the results for these emotions do not show the uniform high levels of agreement found in the facial expression judgments (Sauter, Eisner, Calder, & Scott, 2010; Simon-Thomas, Keltner, Sauter, Sinicropi-Yao, & Abramson, 2009). Thus, to generalize, the preponderance of the research on the vocal signs of emotion shows cross-cultural agreement on emotion patterns in the voice, even when the groups are relatively isolated from Western culture (e.g., Bryant & Barrett, 2008; Scherer, Banse, Wallbott, & Goldbeck, 1991). Two other vocal actions also require mention, and both seem to have cross-cultural signs. The first is laughter, which is seen in all cultures—yet, the actual acoustic properties vary greatly, suggesting that laughter may serve a few different functions, ranging from extreme joy to nervousness (Grammer & Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1990). Crying is also found in all cultures, and it tends to be mostly associated with sadness (Klineberg, 1940)—but it can be seen at times of supposedly happy occasions (Hendriks, Nelson, Cornelius, & Vingerhoets, 2008). We can envision why audible signals of emotion might have been selected for. First, audible signals can transmit information under poor viewing conditions, such as distance, darkness, or even when the individual has his or her face turned away. These signs of emotion are also found in the animal calls as well (e.g., Hauser, 1997; Kitchen et al., 2003; Panksepp, 1998). It makes sense to have a redundant signaling system that can augment or substitute for the primary visually transmitted facial expression. Signals—Face, body, and voice. Neuroanatomical research confirms Darwin’s observation that facial expressions can be biologically driven, involuntary, and harder to control (as in the case of the basic emotions) and, thus, can be considered signs of that emotion. Given that during the experience of emotions the face, body, and voice produce signs, all of these signs can serve as a signal as long as a receiver receives, knowingly or not, information associated 52

with that sign. However, and likely more interestingly, emotions can also be voluntarily posed to function as a signal to represent that emotion, without the individual actually experiencing that emotion. Although Darwin (1872/1998) proposed that facial expressions are part of an involuntary emotional impulse (nerve force), research and observation show that they are not solely the product of involuntary emotional impulses. In fact, almost all the judgment studies of facial expressions of emotion, starting with Darwin (1872/1998) and restarting with Tomkins (1962, 1963), used posed expressions for judgments. In these studies, individuals posed with facial expressions that resemble anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise even though they were not actually experiencing those emotions. There are times, however, in social situations where people attempt to squelch, conceal, or mask their emotional expression by trying to show a different emotion (e.g., showing happiness when someone truly feels sadness). Falsifying emotional expressions may be a socially expedient move, or it may be an attempt to mislead another. The reason deliberate signaling of emotion is possible is that there are two distinct neural pathways that mediate facial expressions, each one originating in a different area of the brain. The pyramidal motor system drives the voluntary facial actions and originates in the cortical motor strip, whereas the extrapyramidal motor system drives the more involuntary, emotional facial actions and originates in the subcortical areas of the brain (Meihlke, 1973; Myers, 1976; Tschiassny, 1953). The research documenting these differences was reliable enough (see review by Rinn, 1984) that prior to modern soft tissue imaging technology, observations of posed and spontaneous facial expressions served as the primary diagnostic criteria for certain brain lesions (DeMyer, 1980). Research in deception detection, however, demonstrates clearly that individuals are not always adept at fabricating emotions. In instances of fabricated emotions, both the pyramidal and extrapyramidal motor systems can be activated simultaneously. When an emotion is triggered, the subcortical area of the brain sends an involuntary ballistic-like signal to the facial nerve(s). To conceal this response, the individual recruits his

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

or her voluntary cortical motor strip area of the brain, which sends a signal to suppress, amplify, or disguise his or her expression in a socially and culturally acceptable way. These competing systems create a “tug of war” over control of the face, and when the subcortical impulse is strong enough, the expression will leak onto the face for a very brief time before the voluntary motor systems regain control of the expression. This competitive confluence of signals produces an emotional facial expression that is shorter in duration than the 0.5–5-s duration originally identified (Ekman & Friesen, 1982). This process is the biology of a microexpression (Ekman & Friesen, 1969a; Frank & Svetieva, 2014; Haggard & Isaacs, 1966); these expressions are so brief because the individual intends to conceal this involuntary action, thus preventing them from being a sign—and, subsequently, a signal—to others. This process is also a test of Darwin’s nerve force principle, and later work has shown that individuals do show emotions even when they deliberately attempt to conceal them (e.g., Ekman, O’Sullivan, Friesen, & Scherer, 1991; Frank & Ekman, 2004; Hurley & Frank, 2011; Porter & ten Brinke, 2008; ten Brinke, Porter, & Baker, 2012). A second reason these expressions are hard to mimic is that not only do voluntary and involuntary facial actions differ by neural pathway, but the actions mediated by these pathways manifest themselves differently. In a normal person, voluntary pyramidal motorsystem-based movements are limited solely by the will. However, extrapyramidal motor-system-based facial actions are characterized by synchronized, smooth, symmetrical, consistent, and reflex-like or ballistic-like actions on the part of the component facial muscles (Ekman & Friesen, 1982; see review by Rinn, 1984). Relatively speaking, these actions appear to be less under the deliberate control of people. Thus, these spontaneously expressed emotional expressions tend to have dynamic qualities different from deliberate, false emotional signals, such as having smoother onsets, more symmetry, and a circumscribed duration lasting between 0.5 and 5 s in length (Ekman & Friesen, 1982; Frank et al., 1993). Signaling body emotions that one is experiencing or not aware of is also readily done. As we noted earlier, similar to the facial expression research, the

vast majority of the research that attempted to identify the signs of emotion in the body actions have asked individuals to pose those gross bodily expressions (e.g., Montepare et al., 1987; Wallbott, 1998). Anecdotally, however, the second author often is asked by others if she needs to use the bathroom because she is shaking her leg or foot unbeknownst to her. Often she does not and notes that she must be feeling anxious about something. Fidgeting is often a sign of anxiety and signals to others the experience of that emotion. It is reasonable to presume gross body movements that are in service to the emotion action tendency—thus, forward lean in the approach emotions such as anger and happy, and backward lean in the avoidant emotions such as fear, disgust, and contempt. Signaling emotions by voice is also possible. Similar to the research on facial expressions, the vast majority of the research on recognizing emotions from the voice has come from individuals mimicking the emotions in one’s voice (e.g., Scherer, 2003). Thus, a stimulus subject may be asked to say a phrase “these pretzels are making me thirsty” to sound disgusted, or to sound angry, or to sound happy, or to sound surprised, and so forth. In this instance, emotions are not elicited but are acted. However, the research shows that this acting is quite effective, and people can recognize the emotion attempted at rates greater than 70% agreement (reviewed by Frank, Griffin, & Maroulis, 2013). Vocally signaling emotions that one does not feel is not unique to humans. The ethological literature is replete with examples of animals managing their threat calls to indicate the location of the threat, or to juveniles delivering false distress calls to bring in an adult to chase away other juvenile competitors (reviewed by Hauser, 1997). One primary phenomenon that accounts for signaling emotions that one may not feel, or concealing emotions one does feel, is the cultural display rules (for a much more in depth discussion of culture and facial expression, see Chapters 4 and 10, this handbook). That is, to smooth social interaction, each culture establishes rules, hierarchies, and so forth to prevent chaos and to permit group action—and learning to manage one’s emotional output is an essential feature of that process. Smoothing social 53

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interaction is what allows individuals to cooperate in groups and to thus live in groups, with the resultant advantages of that lifestyle (allies in war, food, other shared resources, etc.). Symbols—Face, body, and voice. Moreover, people can also use their face to display symbolic gestures (Ekman & Friesen, 1969b), such as raising one’s eyebrow to indicate skepticism, or winking to indicate “I’m kidding.” These facial expressions are culturally specific, learned like language (Ekman, 1977), and tend to be more variable in their duration on the face than emotional expressions (Frank et al., 1993). Therefore, they are not symbols of emotional states but symbols for other concepts or items. One can also use hand gestures, known as emblems (Efron, 1941), to substitute for words such as insults, agreement, negation, confusion, and even speech itself through American Sign Language. Vocally, people may use vocal signs such as fake coughing to symbolically represent sarcasm. Survival value. There are good reasons why it would be important, from an evolution point of view, to show signs, as well as signals and symbols, of these emotional states. The research shows that there do appear to be sections of the brain that respond to these particular signs of emotion (e.g., Sabatinelli et al., 2011). Thus, we can argue that not only have these signs evolved as part of an emotional reaction but so has a “receiver” to detect these emotion signs. Because both of the systems of producing and processing a sign resulted from the same distal process, we can now speculate as to how showing signs of these emotions may have aided our species. Let’s start with anger. It may seem disadvantageous to show anger, as that would seem to give one’s opponent an early warning; thus, the angered attacker loses the element of surprise, which may tip the fight to the attacker’s advantage. However, research has shown that the vast majority of our interactions are with ingroup members, and showing anger has the advantage of often preventing a fight and, thus, obtaining compliance without the risk of injury or infection. In fact, social conflict researchers have known that threats are effective means for obtaining compliance and are inexpensive to deliver (unless one has to follow through; 54

Pruitt & Kim, 2004). However, there are dangers to following through on the threat. Infections are a huge complication associated with fighting, and not just in the ancient world but as recent as 100 years ago. For example, historians estimate that 62 soldiers died from infection per 1,000 in the American Civil War; with the advent of antibiotics, that rate dropped to 0.6 per 1,000 in World War II (Gilchrist, 1998). Thus, a fight that could result in an open wound could be fatal to both winner and loser. The expression of anger is often the first to be noticed in a crowd (Hansen & Hansen, 1988; Williams & Mattingley, 2006; but see also Calvo & Nummenmaa, 2008), which speaks to its importance for social interaction. An anger expression causes others to react, including stopping a transgressor from violating social norms (e.g., Averill, 1983), stopping their actions in general (Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005), causing others to engage in avoidance behaviors (Marsh, Adams, & Kleck, 2005), showing fear (Dimberg & Öhman, 1996; Esteves, Dimberg, & Öhman, 1994), and/or triggering a submissive action—such as an apology—which research shows quickly dissipates the emotion of anger (Ohbuchi, Kameda, & Agarie, 1989). Thus, it may have been more advantageous to “win” by showing anger than to surprise attack individuals—particularly if most of them were within the group, which historically meant that most of them would be related to the aggressor. This nonattack, in turn, would affect the transmission of some of one’s genes, as those relatives share genes who were not attacked with the angry individual (Chagnon, 1988; Diamond, 1997). Contempt would be important to signal as well; indicating the relative status of individuals maintains the social hierarchy. Societies with strong social hierarchies are more stable; and societies that are more stable typically feature less internal violence (Pruitt & Kim, 2004). Disgust too would be imperative to signal for survival value; the ancient world did not feature health department ratings of food found on the ground, on trees and bushes, or animals running away from our ancestors. Thus, to communicate to members of your group the fact that a particular item is not ingestible is a life or death matter; rancid

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

meat and poisonous berries were among the dangers that were major threats to survival (even though they are still with us today, but through science and controlled farming practices they have been greatly reduced). Even in the 20th century, food-borne illnesses from potentially lethal typhoid fever dropped in the population from 100 per 100,000 in the 1920s to less than 2 per 100,000 in 1999 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1999). We can only imagine the prevalence of food-borne illnesses in the ancient world. Given that starvation was a constant survival threat, we can envision individuals attempting to eat anything looking marginally palatable under such starvation conditions; thus, the ultimate palatability would be important to signal to others (Diamond, 1997). Fear also is important to express; fear usually indicates danger or signals to an angry conspecific that one does not intend to fight (thus preventing a fight). Additionally, it would seem apparent that receiving advance notice from other group members of an imminent threat such as a predator would provide individual members of the group a better chance of escaping such a threat. Furthermore, even if the individual who stumbles onto a snake or other predator does not survive the encounter, he or she will have been able to signal to others either through his or her facial and vocal signs of fear to flee before the predator or other threat can take them as well. Vocalizing fear allows the message to transmit over a longer distance, and this communication may help bring allies to battle the threat or to give those farther away from the threat additional time to flee. Happiness, or enjoyment, or other positive emotions are also important to signal, as they indicate approachability and nonthreating actions. Although some have argued for many types of positive emotion (e.g., Ekman, 2003), it may be the case that there is no need to differentiate among those states, as there is no survival value in differentiating pleasure from relief from enjoyment from amusement. Regardless, an individual who shows a genuine sign of a positive emotion (compared to when this same individual signals an emotion with a posed smile) is seen as more pleasant, more genuine, and generally more positive (Frank et al., 1993). Furthermore, given the homicidal nature of the ancient world,

knowing someone was approachable and friendly would be a true life or death judgment. Sadness and/or distress would be important to signal, as they demonstrate that an individual needs attention. Such expressions are essential in infancy, as an infant can only show distress nonverbally, but the emotion lasts well into adulthood. Adults who display expressions of distress are able to generate help and sympathy from others (Eisenberg et al., 1989). Finally, surprise can show novelty and alert others to the novel event to obtain assistance to help comprehend it. Infants will react to a mother’s surprise expression (Hiatt, Sotomayor, Sanchez, Zambrana, & Knight, 1979), but the inherent neutrality of valence for the emotion of surprise often affects its interpretation. For example, if one gets presented with a box, and upon opening sees a gift of $10,000, one would be surprised and happy; if instead, upon opening one sees the decapitated head of a cat, one would be surprised and disgusted. There exists some controversy regarding the nature of surprise (Reisenzein, Bördgen, Holtbernd, & Matz, 2006), but when surprise is disambiguated as either valenced positively or negatively, it is readily recognized (Cheal & Rutherford, 2013). The importance of being able to express emotions in social life is demonstrated through examining adults who do not have the ability to express through their faces, such as those with Moebius syndrome. Such individuals still feel and experience emotions, but their social lives are often disrupted by their inability to produce signs, thus signaling to others their emotional states (Bogart & Matsumoto, 2010; Coulson, O’Dwyer, Adams, & Croxson, 2004). A controlled study examining a Rhesus monkey that had its facial nerve surgically severed, then returned to a social group, showed that the monkey lost its place in the social hierarchy and had more aggression turned toward it (Izard, 1977). Similar social impairments are noted for those suffering from autism or other disorders that disrupt the expression or perception of emotional cues in either the face or voice (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001; Heaton et al., 2012). Thus, in an ancient environment, the inability to process such information may lead to slowed movements, reactions, and thus 55

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potentially lethal outcomes. Regardless, the ability to sign, signal, and use symbols when appropriate, emotions through face, body, and voice seems critical to survival, not only through identifying threats but also through smoothing social interaction, establishing hierarchies, calling for aid, and so forth. The evidence—particularly in light of perceptual centers in the brain for these expressions and the developmental progression among children and among the blind—strongly suggests that they are part of our wiring, thus instrumental to our survival as species.

Identity Given the work showing how lethal our fellow human beings were in the ancient world, with more than 25% of male deaths due to homicide (e.g., LeBlanc, 2003), it becomes clear that recognizing kin, and by extension, individual identity, could be a life or death judgment. There are life and death parallels in current animal behavior; for example, troops of male chimpanzees will patrol the boundaries of their territory, looking to expand it by assaulting or killing any males belonging to neighboring groups they come across and by stealing females to impregnate (Goodall, 2000; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). Darwin himself argued for the selection pressure for humans to protect against others or other groups by banding together, as this would confer an evolutionary advantage: A tribe including many members who, from possessing a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection. (Darwin, 1872/1998, p. 132) Therefore, being able to distinguish “us” from “them” would be an important capability. In fact, two well-established lines of research speak to this issue: first, is work on group behavior, and second—related to the first—is person recognition. Group behavior. One of the most replicated findings in all of social science is the finding that once 56

individuals are placed in groups, almost regardless of the placement criteria, they will view members of their own group—the ingroup—as being better than members of other groups—the outgroup (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Some have argued that group membership is a driving force in the evolution of our brains (Byrne & Whiten, 1988). Pursuant to this idea is the male warrior hypothesis (Van Vugt, De Cremer, & Janssen, 2007). This hypothesis argues that evolution has keyed the male brain, more so than the female brain, to engage in intergroup aggression, to derogate or infrahumanize outgroups, to form coalitions in the presence of outgroup threats or competition, to demonstrate more loyalty to the group, to be more willing to accept violence to solve political struggles, to prefer social hierarchies, and generally to define themselves more by the groups they belong to rather than individual characteristics (Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961; Van Vugt, 2011). This group behavior is a means for defense but is also a means for offense to attack and defeat potential rivals; many of whom would try to kill the individual if they too had a numerical or tactical advantage. As mentioned previously, this behavior is observed in chimpanzees (Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). Interestingly, research has shown that in the presence of allies, men are more likely to down-estimate the formidableness of potential opponents (Fessler & Holbrook, 2013). Thus, this coalitional, cooperative group behavior can be a life or death game, but it is a game played more heavily by males than females. It strongly argues that propensity for banding into groups was evolutionarily selected for, but this group formation would not be possible without a corresponding ability to recognize who is in your group and who is not. Person recognition. We seem particularly attuned to recognizing people. The fact that we put pictures of our faces on identification cards, and not our hands, feet, or other body parts attests to this conjecture. There is a robust literature showing that there are sections in the human brain that respond directly to faces (Hadjikhani, Kveraga, Naik, & Ahlfors, 2009; Ro, Russell, & Lavie, 2001; also see Chapter 9, this handbook). We not only can recognize identity but we can also recognize group

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

affiliation; for example, Rule, Garrett, and Ambady (2010) showed that Mormons can recognize from still photos whether the individual depicted is a fellow Mormon or not, at rates greater than chance. However, other research shows that we are also quite good at recognizing individuals from their voices (Hollien, Majewski, & Doherty, 1982; also see Chapter 11, this handbook) and also from their odors (see Chapter 14, this handbook). We are also quite reliable in recognizing not only a person’s gender from simply observing him or her walking via point-light displays (Kozlowski & Cutting, 1977) but also if we know him or her (Cutting & Kozlowski, 1977). This person recognition can be taken one step further, as it also appears that we are able to recognize kin from nonkin (D. Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2003). Identifying kin from nonkin means recognizing individuals who look and smell like us. The evolutionary advantage of banding together with those who share our genes is apparent—even if we do not survive to reproduction, the survival of the kin-group ensures that at least some of our genes will be passed on. This ability to recognize faces is surprisingly robust; participants playing a Prisoner’s Dilemma game against a researcher-generated opponent are more likely to choose the cooperative move when they see a photo of the other individual that has been morphed with a photo of the participant him- or herself, thus making the opponent look more similar to the participant (DeBruine, 2002). Taken together, we can argue that we seem biologically wired to recognize individuals, to recognize when they are kin, and to band together with them to defeat nonkin competitors (see Chapter 9, this handbook). Furthermore, as mentioned previously, this phenomenon seems particularly robust in males (Van Vugt, 2011). Other nonverbal clues relevant to survival. We may also make an evolutionary argument that we can identify individuals who are formidable threats and, thus, avoid them (e.g., Fessler, Holbrook, & Snyder, 2012). There are a number of factors associated with this phenomenon, but they involve estimating the individual’s formidableness from his or her body size, voice, and even face, facial hair, and gazing behaviors (Puts, 2010). For example, people

can estimate body size from facial appearance (see Chapter 9, this handbook) as well as body strength (Sell et al., 2009). Dominance as conveyed from static facial clues was associated with the perception of the individual as being more threatening (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008), and this characteristic can be assessed reliably with images shown at tachistoscopic speeds of less than 40 ms (Carré, McCormick, & Mondloch, 2009). This suggests that dominance was a very important characteristic to note in individuals, and likely throughout our evolutionary past, as the more dominant-appearing faces and body sizes are associated with being formidable potential opponents and thus to be avoided in confrontations. Thus, physical size and estimated strength from static nonverbal cues in the face, body, and voice could dissuade one from engaging in conflict, much like the facial expression of anger mentioned earlier. At the other end, research shows that the nonverbal behavior displayed through one’s gait can signal to others that one is not only nonformidable but is also a potential target of aggression. Individuals imprisoned for mugging others agreed on which individuals, whose gait was shown on video, they would choose to victimize (Grayson & Stein, 1981). Moreover, Book, Costello, and Camilleri (2013) showed that individuals who scored higher on psychopathy were able to recognize, from gait alone, which individuals had been previously victimized by an assault. Thus, one’s body actions seem to draw the attention of the more violent predator-like individuals in society, thus increasing the chances that the potential victim will either not survive to the age of reproduction, and if they do, they will likely not be vied for as a reproductive partner. We turn next to this evolution issue. REPRODUCTIVE FITNESS Having successfully navigated the threats from predators, tainted food, disease, and fellow humans (particularly males), an individual is now in position to reproduce and, thus, pass on his or her genes to the next generation. The likelihood of that happening, or the frequency of it happening, is also influenced by nonverbal cues. In fact, the nonverbal signs are 57

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what comprise attractiveness—but attractiveness is a catch-all category for signs or traits that are desirable, or to rephrase, those highest in reproductive fitness. Within the category of attractiveness, we subdivide into those characteristics associated with perceptions of health, fertility, sexual receptivity or availability, and dominance. At least in humans, it appears that these characteristics are more genderlinked, as fertility seems to apply exclusively to females, and dominance exclusively to males. Health applies equally to both genders, but signals of availability also seem to favor females over males, as females are the limiting sex. Finally, we note that the distinctions between signs, signals, and symbols are a bit more muddled in reproductive fitness, as many of the cues associated with the signs, signals, and symbols have only been articulated recently (see Chapters 9 and 14, this handbook). The reader will notice that much of the work, but not all, on the signs, signals, and symbols of reproductive fitness demonstrate that individuals vary in their desire for particular features or traits, suggesting that those features and traits are in fact signals, which result from signs of reproductive fitness. Subsequently, research in this area inherently commits the fallacy of the converse (i.e., affirming the consequent); therefore, the propositions that follow provide evidence that such possibilities are valid but should be interpreted with caution. We note instances when enough research evidence exists to suggest a valid relationship among signs, signals, and symbols.

Health The state of a potential reproductive partner’s health is instrumental in the survival of his or her joint offspring, as healthy individuals produce offspring healthy enough to stand the greatest chance of survival. Thus, any sign that communicates, or signals, the health status of an individual would seem desirable for mating. Face—Signs, signals, and symbols. The past few years have seen a number of advances in identifying and understanding the signs of genetic health in the human face. The best review to date is found in Chapter 9, this handbook, and the reader is directed there. In addition to the signs identified by Re and 58

Rule (Chapter 9, this handbook), facial symmetry, specifically, has been noted as a sign of health as well as genetic health, but that is discussed later when referring to the overall health of bodies. In contrast to what is implied by symmetry, high levels of testosterone have been shown to affect the immune system negatively, and thus male faces with characteristically high testosterone markers (heavy brow ridges, stronger jaw line) may indicate a slightly compromised immune system (Muehlenbein & Bribiescas, 2005). Exactly how such a tradeoff might occur is outlined by the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis, which posits that hormones responsible for sexual differentiation may also compromise one’s immune system (Folstad & Karter, 1992). In other words, as men display more masculinized features, they take a greater risk of harming their own health. Therefore, only the most physically capable men can afford potentially compromising their own health to display more masculinized features. Given this hypothesis, sexual selection models in which “good genes” are selected for predict that women will prefer hypermasculinized traits (Scheib, Gangestad, & Thornhill, 1999). Therefore, facial features such as heavy brow ridges and strong jaw lines are signs of compromised immune systems that females may interpret as signaling strength and facilitate their decision to mate. In fact, women, under certain circumstances, will prefer males with such an appearance despite the health implications because it suggests the male is of high quality if he can overcome that high testosterone handicap (see Chapter 9, this handbook; also see Zahavi, 1975). The “good gene” hypothesis posits that physical characteristics are perceived as attractive to the extent “healthy” individuals can display these characteristics, but “unhealthy” individuals cannot, or at least not to the same extent (e.g., Andersson, 1994; Gangestad & Simpson, 2000; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999). Therefore, men with high levels of testosterone who have survived to reproductive age may signal greater fitness than the men with lower levels of testosterone. Given the good gene and handicap hypotheses, it is difficult to determine exactly what masculinized facial signs signal, but it is clear that the information signaled from the signs is used in determining mate quality.

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

There are other facial appearance variables that affect perceptions and, hence, reproductive fitness. To quickly summarize (see Chapter 9, this handbook, for a more thorough review), individuals with more homogenous skin texture and distribution of color in their faces are seen as healthier and more attractive (e.g., Fink & Matts, 2008). Moreover, Re and Rule (see Chapter 9, this handbook) have identified the reason why faces that hue (i.e., sign) toward red and yellow and that are lighter are also seen as more desirable. Their basic premise is that redness signals cardiovascular health, yellow signals consumption of healthy carotenoid bearing vegetables and fruits, and lightness signals the allowance of more ultra-violet rays through to enhance production of Vitamin D, all of which help to ensure healthier offspring. Moreover, they have discussed the role of adiposity, or subcutaneous fat, in a face (i.e., signs) and have reported that moderate levels were associated with higher levels of health, whereas low fat or too much fat were seen as less attractive and were associated with poorer health outcomes (i.e., signal; Coetzee, Perrett, & Stephen, 2009). These are considered signals because they convey information regarding the health of the individual, and in this case, it appears that the relationship between the sign (i.e., facial fat) and signal (i.e., healthy) is valid. It also goes without saying that individuals adorn themselves with objects to enhance beauty, and these are often culturally specific (lip plates, tattoos, etc.; again, see Chapter 9, this handbook). Interestingly, males will groom or shave facial hair to look more attractive, whereas females will apply makeup to appear more attractive. The pattern of makeup is also not random: Eye liner, mascara, and eye shadow function to highlight the eyes (as larger eyes are seen as more feminine), whereas the use of foundation, or cover-up, is used to generate the appearance of homogeneous skin tone, texture, and color that were noted earlier as being attractive. The use of blush on the cheeks of Caucasian women mimics sexual arousal (McKinney & Sprecher, 1991). Facial adornments serve as symbolic representations of health, whether valid or not. Body—Signs, signals, and symbols. One of the most researched areas in health is the symmetry of

the body, including the face. Facial and body symmetry describes the extent to which, when compared along the sagittal plane, the right hemisphere of one’s face, or body, matches the left hemisphere of one’s face, or body. Conversely, fluctuating asymmetry is defined as the random deviations from symmetry in bilateral traits (e.g., eyes; Van Valen, 1962; also see Chapter 9, this handbook). The specific body markers used to determine symmetry or fluctuating asymmetry vary from study to study; however, typical measurements include ear length and breadth, as well as elbow, wrist, hand, knee, ankle, foot, and finger length (see Rhodes & Simmons, 2007, for a review), from which a composite measure is derived (e.g., Gangestad, Bennett, & Thornhill, 2001). Unfortunately, fluctuating asymmetry is much more complicated to determine, and does not exhibit a strong negative correlation with symmetry as one might expect (Rhodes & Simmons, 2007). One reason fluctuating asymmetry is difficult to determine is that the extent of the differences between the right side and left side is similar to what one might expect from measurement error (Palmer & Strobeck, 2003). An additional problem with measuring fluctuating asymmetry is that there are some types of asymmetry that are a normal part of human development (e.g., Dufour & Weatherhead, 1996; Gangestad et al., 2001). For example, it is typical to have one foot slightly larger than the other foot. Generally, the more symmetry one displays, the more attractive he or she is perceived by others (i.e., signal; e.g., Grammer & Thornhill, 1994; Watson & Thornhill, 1994). This effect tends to be stronger for faces (effect size = .30) than for the body (effect size = .14), possibly because facial features are more closely aligned allowing for comparisons of features to be made more easily than body parts that are further apart (Rhodes & Simmons, 2007; also see Wade, 2010, for a review). Additionally, this effect dissipates when one half of an individual’s face is reflected to generate the other half (this is referred to as chimeric faces in Chapter 9, this handbook; see also Kowner, 1996; Langlois, Roggman, & Musselman, 1994). Ratings of attractiveness for chimeric faces do not reach the same levels as naturally occurring symmetrical faces. Findings regarding fluctuating asymmetry have been mixed. Given some of the issues 59

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surrounding the measurement of fluctuating asymmetry, Rhodes and Simmons (2007) were unable to determine conclusively, through meta-analytic techniques, the relationship between fluctuating asymmetry and ratings of attractiveness. One possible evolutionary explanation for why symmetrical faces, and bodies, are seen as attractive is that they could be perceived as indicators of overall genetic health (i.e., a sign). In fact, Zaidel, Aarde, and Baig (2005) found that assessments of targets’ health were influenced by their facial symmetry; in other words, the more symmetrical the target’s face, the healthier he or she was perceived by observers. Research has demonstrated that departures from facial symmetry indicate lower genetic health and greater susceptibility to perturbations during development (e.g., Gangestad, Thornhill, & Yeo, 1994; Livshits & Kobyliansky, 1989; Møller & Alatalo, 1999). These findings suggest that facial symmetry is in fact a valid sign of genetic health. Therefore, despite researchers’ inability to measure fluctuating asymmetry, it appears that people are able to detect the signals of fluctuating asymmetry to make judgments of attractiveness. Movements in the body, particularly from females, that are seen as “natural” are rated as more attractive (Brown, Cash, & Noles, 1986). Male dance movements can also be a signal as to mate “quality” and health, and females agree on which types of movements indicate such (Fink, Weege, Manning, & Trivers, 2014). These findings suggest that dancing is a valid sign of health, but further research needs to determine the association between dancing as a valid sign and signal of health. Conversely, there is strong evidence suggesting that disruption in movements (i.e., sign) signals injury or illness. For example, research on Parkinson’s disease suggests that gait is controlled by two areas of the brain associated with emotional and volitional movement—the basal ganglia, which also controls emotion, as well as higher cortical areas that control volitional movement (e.g., Lewis, Byblow, & Walt, 2000; Thaut, McIntosh, Prassas, & Rice, 1992)—and that the effects of the disease produce measureable changes in movement. Specifically, depressed Parkinson’s patients show decreased stride length, decreased coordination of arms in movement, and slower velocity (Lemke, 60

Wendorff, Mieth, Buhl, & Linnemann, 2000). Parkinson’s patients also show reduced stride, but they can be trained to expand the stride by employing various visual clues, again suggesting some volitional control (Lewis et al., 2000), although it is these disruptions in movement that are the hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. Of course other disruptions such as limping signal injury, which by definition is a reflection of current, but possibly not future, health. The current state of research in the area of body movement does suggest that body movement is a valid sign of genetic health that signals health status to others; however, more research needs to be conducted to elucidate the relationship between body movement as a valid sign of health. As noted elsewhere in this chapter, odor is a nonverbal sign, and the use of perfumes and other scents to cover more noxious odors is one way to symbolically represent health (see Chapter 14, this handbook). Often foul odors indicate infection, and individuals with such odors will be ostracized. For example, women in sub-Sahara Africa often suffer from obstetric fistulas, where tears in the vagina during childbirth push through to the bladder or rectum allowing the waste products to leak into the vagina (often young, small child brides); this causes intensely foul odors to emanate from these women, who are subsequently socially ostracized (Kimani, Ogutu, & Kibe, 2014). Therefore, perfume and other scents serve as a symbol of health because they are used to signal health to others. Clothing is another nonverbal cue, and despite their practical origins (protection against cold and weather), styles and colors are chosen specifically to symbolically represent the wearer’s personality or social status, which may indirectly link back to health. Individuals can also choose clothes to conceal health-related issues, such as rashes, acne, scars, loss of hair, as well as infections of various sorts. Females will often wear undergarments that help shape the body toward the most attractive ratios of hips to waist, which beside signaling health, also signal fertility (Singh, 1994). All of these trappings serve a symbolic function, as they are external to the individual but are intended to signal the health of the individual.

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

Fertility Fertility is closely associated with health, but it is a special subcategory that applies more to women than men. That is, the healthier female is presumed to be a more fertile female. However, a line of research has explored fertility per se, and this is where we turn. Face—Signs, signals, and symbols. The extent to which a female face looks feminine, the more attractive she is perceived (see Chapter 9, this handbook). A face appears more feminine—larger eyes, fuller lips, proportionally smaller chin and nose, and higher cheekbones—under higher levels of the primary female hormone estrogen (see Chapter9, this handbook); and higher levels of estrogen have been associated with higher rates of conception (Lipson & Ellison, 1996). This nonverbal sign, therefore, may be a sign of fertility and subsequently makes such features valid signals of fertility. In fact, women with more feminine faces—when other variables were controlled, such as use of birth control—did in fact produce more offspring (Pflüger, Oberzaucher, Katina, Holzleitner, & Grammer, 2012). A parallel line of research argued that adult females with more baby-faced proportions were also seen as more attractive, because the appearance of youth suggested fertility (Berry & Zebrowitz-MacArthur, 1988), although there is likely a curvilinear relationship between youthfulness, or age, and fertility (i.e., too young or too old unable to bear children). It does seem that these signs of fertility signal to males that females are fertile. Female rhesus macaques signal their fertility with a more luminescent face (i.e., sign), and males familiar with these females can identify when they are about to become fertile (Higham et al., 2011). Younger women were also judged more attractive and fertile from their faces (and also their voices) than older women, and again femininity seemed to drive the process (Röder, Fink, Feinberg, & Neave, 2013). Body—Signs, signals, and symbols. One of the most researched body signs of fertility is a woman’s waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). During puberty, men and women undergo hormonal, physiological, and morphological changes. One apparent morphological

shift among women is the widening of their hips due to the accumulation of gynoid fat on the thighs, legs, buttocks, and so forth (Kenrick, 1987; Singh, 1993, 1995). Given that the widths of one’s waist and hips are influenced by the concentration of sex hormones (Björntorp, 1988; Singh & Young, 1995), measurements of one’s waist and hips are valid signs of fertility (e.g., reproductive capabilities). In fact, WHR correlates with health outcomes (i.e., sign) as well as fertility perceptions (i.e., signal). For instance, among women, WHR greater than .85 is related to increased health risk factors such as increased heart disease (Larsson, 1985) and Type II diabetes (Barbieri, 1990; Björntorp, 1988), because women with such a ratio exhibit greater concentration of visceral adipose tissue (fat deposits; Lemieux, Prud’homme, Tremblay, Bouchard, & Després, 1996). These risk factors also affect fertility (Wass, Waldenström, Rössner, & Hellberg, 1997; Zaadstra et al., 1993). Therefore, one should be able to use WHR as an indicator of fitness and make a decision regarding mating based, in part, on WHR. Singh (1993, 1994, 1995, 2002; Singh & Luis, 1995; Singh & Young, 1995) demonstrated in a series of studies the importance of WHR on one’s physical attractiveness. He concluded that although body weight of ideal standards of beautiful women has changed since the 1930s (as indicated by Miss America contestants and Playboy playmates), preference for a specific WHR has varied little. Additionally, Singh (1993) found that men as old as 85 years of age found women with smaller WHRs to be more attractive and believed them to be more reproductively capable than women with higher WHR. Men in America and European countries view a WHR of a 0.7, regardless of overall weight, as more attractive (Singh & Young, 1995), presumably because it is a valid signal of fertility. In fact, Singh and Young (1995) found that men believed that women with a WHR that was closer to 0.7 were more capable of reproduction than women with a WHR deviating further from 0.7. When a female is more fertile, she will produce odors that will trigger more sexual-related thoughts in men, will cause men to perceive the woman as more aroused, and will cause men to be more likely to mimic the female’s behaviors (Miller & Maner, 2011). 61

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Given that there exist signs and signals of fertility, individuals may use external signs (i.e., symbols) to convey fertility. However, in such instances, it is likely that individuals are signaling sexual receptivity, or availability, and therefore this topic is discussed next.

Sexual Receptivity or Availability Unlike normal adult males who are always sexually receptive and fertile, females have the ability to separate sexual receptiveness from their fertility due to their ovulatory cycle. Although females are capable of engaging in sexual activities at any point during her menstrual cycle, females are most sexually receptive, or available for sex, during ovulation. At least in humans, and most mammals, ovulation occurs midway through the menstrual cycle (typically around Days 10–18 of a normal 28-day menstrual cycle). During this time, the release of hormones (e.g., luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone) induces ovulation, or the release of an ovum (i.e., egg) to be fertilized. Although somewhat debated, there is strong evidence suggesting that during ovulation, females are most sexually receptive (e.g., Pillsworth, Haselton, & Buss, 2004; Roberts et al., 2004). Exactly what signs fluctuate across the menstrual cycle to produce fertility signals have not been clearly identified, but a few possibilities are highlighted here. Face—Signs, signals, and symbols. Within the face of humans, research examining specific signs that indicate availability during ovulation has not been well researched. However, during courtship, a woman signals interest in a romantic partner with her face through increased blood flow to the face resulting in blush on the cheeks and a swelling of the lips (which makeup mimics; McKinney & Sprecher, 1991), and her pupils dilate—which studies show makes a woman look more attractive (Hess, 1965). Note these are all involuntary actions and, therefore, are signs and valid signals of sexual receptivity. Although never directly assessed, it is possible that increased eye contact is also another sign of sexual receptivity. Research in the area of immediacy behaviors demonstrates that increased eye contact increases liking (e.g., Argyle, 1988). Given that human females have control over when they are 62

perceived as sexually receptive, irrespective of where they are in the menstrual cycle, they may exploit signs of receptivity to their advantage to secure mating partners. In the Renaissance era, women in Italy also used belladonna, a low grade poison, to artificially dilate their pupils, which also replicated the pupillary reaction when someone is sexually interested, and which to observers makes the face look more attractive (Hess, 1965). Body—Signs, signals, and symbols. The literature is replete with examples from the animal kingdom of valid signs and signals displayed in the body communicating sexual receptivity. Primates often show red (blood engorged) areas in their chests or buttocks to signal sexual receptivity (Dixson, 1983). One of the most well-researched sign of sexual receptivity is lordosis, which is displayed by most rodents. Lordosis is a body posture, controlled by neural circuits and hormones, that is associated with sexual receptivity because it facilitates copulation (Pfaff & Sakuma, 1979). Among humans, women will stand closer, stand with a more direction face-to-face orientation, will lean in more toward the person of interest, and will include more casual touch (see Knapp & Hall, 2010, for a review) to indicate receptivity to a romantic partner. It is not clear whether these actions change across the menstrual cycle or if they are voluntary or involuntary; regardless, they are valid signals of receptivity, and future research would benefit from examining how they change across the menstrual cycle. Likewise, a woman’s production of pheromones in general can suggest sexual receptivity (see Chapter 14, this handbook). Moreover, men seem to be able to detect ovulation through not just odors but also through the women’s voices and behaviors (reviewed by Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011). In terms of symbols used to signal sexual receptivity, it has been demonstrated that during ovulation, women are more likely to self-ornament by grooming more thoroughly and by wearing more attractive clothing (Haselton, Mortezaie, Pillsworth, Bleske-Rechek, & Frederick, 2007). Women are also more likely to wear revealing clothing (Durante, Li, & Haselton, 2008), to use more appearancerelated beauty products (Durante, Griskevicius,

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

Hill, Perilloux, & Li, 2011; Saad & Stenstrom, 2012), and to spend more time applying these products (Guéguen, 2012). Similar to their primate counterparts, during ovulation, women are likely to display sexual receptivity with signs of red—women are more likely to wear red or pink attire and makeup during ovulation (Beall & Tracy, 2013), and men are more attracted to them when they do (Elliot & Niesta, 2008). Additionally, women, not controlling for where in their menstrual cycle they were, who were interested in casual sexual relationships chose to display the color red in their web profile pages (Elliot & Pazda, 2012). Other—Signs, signals, and symbols. Other signs, signals, and symbols of sexual receptivity may include voice and affiliation. Pipitone and Gallup (2008) found that women’s voices varied across their menstrual cycle, and men preferred women’s voices when they were ovulating. S. E. Hill and Buss (2008) demonstrated that men found women less desirable when in the presence of males than when in the presence of females or alone; however, unpublished data from the second author have revealed no effect of the presences of others based on gender, but instead desirability is based on attractiveness. Regardless, it is possible that the presence of others (i.e., symbol) communicates receptivity. Males or females in the presence of opposite sex others may be viewed as less sexually receptive to others because they are sexually receptive to those immediately present.

Dominance Whereas fertility and sexual receptivity were almost exclusively about female nonverbal cues, dominance is much more about male nonverbal cues. The key driver of the dominance nonverbal cues is the hormone testosterone, which has effects on facial appearance, body appearance, and behavioral actions. Testosterone emerges during the two critical periods of neural and physical development (i.e., prenatal, pubertal). Although prenatal development ultimately sets one’s hormonal, neurological, and physiological development on a trajectory, pubertal development is necessary to complete sexual

development. On average, puberty begins at the age of 10–11 for females and 11–12 for males, and is complete by the age of 17 for both sexes. Puberty for both sexes involves a number of hormonal changes that result in morphological shifts, such as the development of secondary sex characteristics (e.g., development of breasts, body hair). Similar to prenatal sexual differentiation, pubertal sexual differentiation can be attributed to differences in the circulation and sensitivity of sex hormones, such as androgens and estrogens (Abbassi, 1998; MacGillivray, Morishima, Conte, Grumbach, & Smith, 1998). By sexual maturity, signs displayed by the face and body become sexually dimorphic and signal dominance and submissiveness. Some of the more notable changes that both males and females undergo are changes to their skeletal musculature associated with the body and face, which begin to masculinize. Face—Signs, signals, and symbols. Weston, Friday, and Liò (2007) found that by adulthood, the face is sexual dimorphic, with males having shorter anterior upper faces than females (i.e., forehead). Weston et al. found that the structure of the face seems to be independent of body size, and the growth trajectories of the length and width of the face for males and females seem to diverge around puberty. The result is that males have faces wider than they are tall, in comparison to females (again, see Chapter 9, this handbook). This sex difference in facial ratio (i.e., sign) does not emerge until puberty, when males experience a higher concentration of testosterone than females. In adults, it has been demonstrated that salivary testosterone concentration was positively correlated with facial masculinity (Penton-Voak & Chen, 2004), suggesting that androgens are responsible for masculinizing faces. These findings suggest that facial ratio is a valid sign of testosterone exposure. Although facial ratio has not been studied in this capacity, Weston et al. (2007) have argued that one reason for this differentiation is due to sexual selection pressures, both inter- and intrasexual. Indeed, as stated earlier, many studies demonstrate that the greater the perceived masculinity of a male face (but not necessarily a more masculinized facial ratio), the 63

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more attractive it appears to women (e.g., Rhodes, 2006; Rhodes et al., 2007). Additionally, masculinized faces may contribute to intrasexual selection processes. Rival males perceive more masculinized faces as more socially and physically dominant (Mazur & Mueller, 1996; Swaddle & Reierson, 2002), potentially deterring male rivals from competing with males that possess greater genetic fitness. It is possible that facial structure (i.e., sign) is a valid signal of dominance. Research has found that males with more masculinized faces are more likely to “cheat” in Prisoner’s Dilemma games, and observers are able to accurately identify these “cheaters” (Verplaetse, Vanneste, & Braeckman, 2007). It has been demonstrated that facial ratio, as measured with similar procedures to Weston et al. (2007), predicts aggressive behavior (Carré & McCormick, 2008), and observers’ ratings of predicted aggression is correlated with that same facial ratio (Carré et al., 2009). Finally, within the context of economic and social dilemma games, wider male faces are related to how individuals interact with their counterpart. Specifically, Stirrat and Perrett (2010) found that facial ratio, as measured using the same procedures as Carré and McCormick (2008), predicted men’s likelihood to reciprocate in economic games. Additionally, males with wider faces were more likely to engage in unethical behavior such as exploiting their partner (Stirrat & Perrett, 2010) as well as using deception and cheating (Haselhuhn & Wong, 2012). These findings, however, may be moderated by whether group affiliation is salient. Stirrat and Perrett (2012) found that men with more masculinized facial ratios were more likely to use cooperative strategies with ingroup members than outgroup members, when group membership was made salient. Although there are a number of studies that suggest the importance of facial structure in some capacity, however, there still is a dearth of information. More recently, several studies have been published that have challenged whether there exists a sexual dimorphism in facial ratios (e.g., Lefevre et al., 2012; Özener, 2012). Additionally, the relationship between facial ratios and aggression has been challenged, suggesting that when controlling for body size, this relationship dissipates (Deaner, 64

Goetz, Shattuck, & Schnotala, 2012). It is possible that other allometric properties contribute to people’s perceptions of social and physical dominance. Beards and other adornments can exacerbate the appearance associated with dominance. For example, beards enhance the jaw line, moustaches can create the appearance of a downturned lip (thus not appearing to smile, which those males who are lower in testosterone, as well as women in general, smile more; Dabbs, 1997; Deutsch, 1990). Increasingly common place among prisoners are teardrop tattoos on the face, just beneath the eye of one’s cheek. This tattoo has become a symbolic representation of the number of people one has killed. The placement of such a tattoo on the face indicates that wearers hope to signal dominance to others very clearly. Body—Signs, signals, and symbols. One of the first things one can notice is the size of an individual (i.e., sign). Earlier we discussed the concept of the formidable male—and that males who are more formidable are likely to be avoided in confrontations. Females have a preference for larger males, or at least males who are larger than them (Pawlowski, Dunbar, & Lipowicz, 2000). The “male taller” social norm is embedded in almost all cultures, and it is reflected in the fact that an adult human male is typically 10% larger than a human female, with a higher ratio of muscle to fat than a female (Fairbairn, 1997). In fact, women who live in more dangerous areas, compared to those who live in safer areas, show a significantly stronger preference for more formidable males (Snyder et al., 2011). These findings suggest that body size signals dominance. A second body sign is very subtle, and it is found in the hands–digit ratio. Digit ratio refers to the relative length of digits, or fingers, measured from the superior tip of the finger to the midpoint of the inferior crease of the finger. The ratio between one’s second digit (2D; index finger) and fourth digit (4D; ring finger) is of particular interest to researchers (see Manning, 2002, for a review). It has been demonstrated that the 2D:4D is a proxy for sex hormone levels during critical periods of neural development (Manning, Scutt, Wilson, & Lewis-Jones, 1998). To date, there has been strong evidence suggesting that

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

prenatal androgen exposure is partly due to receptors’ sensitivity to androgens (the class of hormones that testosterone falls under). More evidence implicating the importance of androgen receptor sensitivity in 2D:4D variation can be found from examining the digit ratio of genetic males (XY) with androgen insensitivity syndrome, a condition that results in dysfunctional androgen receptors but with normal functioning hormonal circulation systems; such individuals display feminized digit ratios (Berenbaum, Bryk, Nowak, Quigley, & Moffat, 2009). In fact, 2D:4D is correlated with verbal aggression (Shaw, Kotowski, Boster, & Levine, 2012) and overall aggression in males (Bailey & Hurd, 2005; Benderlioglu & Nelson, 2004). As an aside, there also appears to be evidence that 2D:4D may be a valid sign of health (Fink, Manning, & Neave, 2006; Manning & Bundred, 2001) and fertility among males (Manning et al., 1998). Additionally, more dominant men will touch others more, and will invade personal space more, than less dominant men (Knapp & Hall, 2010). The importance of body size as a signal for dominance can be seen in the importance that men place in increasing their muscle mass to appear larger. Men will typically workout to develop the musculature in their bodies as well to further enhance their dominant appearance (Wienke, 1998). As with fertility and health, individuals can wear clothing that enhances their dominance. For example, more aggressive sports teams wear black uniforms (Frank & Gilovich, 1988). It has also been suggested that the color red (i.e., sign) signals aggressiveness to others and affects performance (R. A. Hill & Barton, 2005). R. A. Hill and Barton (2005) found that among combat sports in the 2004 Olympic Games, contestants wearing red won more often than their opponents wearing blue, suggesting that the color red is a signal of dominance and aggression to others who are then more willing to succeed. Other items on clothing, or even body art/tattoos, may include aggressive logos of motorcycles, skulls, military style items (guns, tanks, knives), and so forth. However, men may wear shoe lifts or adopt hair styles that enhance their height; in other cultures, individuals wear headdresses or other ornaments to enhance size. Epaulets on the shoulders

enhance the perceived shoulder size and also exaggerate the shoulders to suggest more upper body strength. CONCLUSION The signs, signals, and symbols of nonverbal communication cross a number of boundaries, from the voluntary action to the involuntary reflex, and with a number of points in between. Table 3.1 is our hypothesized usage of these clues based on their survival or reproductive fitness potential and their sign, signal, or symbol status. This is not comprehensive, and it likely oversimplifies, but it is an attempt to get the taxonomy rolling so others, with future research programs, can fill in these blanks or move a behavior from one category to another, and so forth. It is clear that these nonverbal behaviors are useful to us now and were likely more useful to us in the ancient environment (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). Our modern world has taken some of these and mimicked them (e.g., makeup in women to mimic sexual arousal) or enhanced them (shoes with heels to enhance height and thus dominance, shoulder epaulets to broaden shoulders), and this is not accidental—it is capitalizing on these basic human signs and signals recognized by other humans. This is why we do not see blush applied to the middle of a woman’s forehead, we do not see jacket designs that deliberately narrow a man’s shoulders, and so forth. Moreover, humans learn to mimic the involuntary dynamic actions; we learn to smile when we are not happy, to bluff with anger, and to pose any and all emotional states even when we are not experiencing them. Nonverbal communication is essential to our survival as a species. It enabled us to better execute and manage conflict, establish hierarchies, avoid dangerous foods, escape danger, call for aid, and so forth. It also enabled us to identify the most desirable individuals within our species, those most healthy, fertile, dominant, and interested in us. We can argue that verbal communication can accomplish many of these goals; however, the fact that verbal communication is entirely voluntary renders it suspect as a clear definitive sign of our health, fertility, or 65

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TABLE 3.1 Hypothesized Evolutionary Role for Various Nonverbal Signs, Signals, and Symbols Channel

Characteristic

Survival?

Reproductive fitness?

Sign?

Signal?

Symbol?

Face Static features

Yes

Color in face

Yes

Emotion expression Other expression

Yes

Eye gaze

Yes

Static size

Yes

Adornments

Finger ratio Waist-to-hip ratio Movements

Yes: Identity Yes: Formidable Yes: Gender Yes: Health Yes: Health Yes: Overcome handicap (male) Yes: Fertility (female) Yes: Sexual arousal Yes: Basic emotions Yes: Imminent actions No Yes: Language (emblems) Yes: Feigned emotions No Yes: Dominance Yes: Sexual interest

No Yes: Makeup

No Yes: Mimic emotions

Yes: Emblems

Body

Odor

Yes: Identity Yes: Gender No

Yes: Formidable Yes: Health No

No No

No Yes

Yes: Testosterone Yes: Estrogen

Yes

Yes: Emotions

No Yes: Fertility Yes: Health Yes: Imminent action

Yes

Yes: Arousal Yes: Dominance Yes: Gender Yes: Identity

Yes: Health Yes: Fertility Yes: Mood

Yes: Enhance other clues No No Yes: Sign language

Yes: Sexual interest Yes: Weakness Yes: Emblems Yes: Imminent Yes: Perfume actions

Yes: Sexual interest

Voice Tone

Yes

Style

Yes

approachability. The fact that the nonverbal communication cues are more likely to be involuntary suggests that they are more genuine markers of our internal states, thus our genetic fitness. Furthermore, they appear to be that way because of the long evolutionary history of our species, the majority of it accomplished without language—as the past 66

Yes: Basic emotions Yes: Imminent actions Yes: Health Yes: Identity Yes: Dominance Yes: Identity Yes: Dominance Yes: Health

Yes: Mimic emotions

Yes: Mimic identity Yes: Words

150,000–200,000 or so years with articulate language is a drop in the bucket compared to our 6 million years on the planet. Thus, the 5.8 million year head start that the signs and signals of nonverbal communication got on verbal communication has helped it maintain its presence within us, and it continues to influence us today.

Evolution and Nonverbal Communication

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Chapter 4

The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication David Matsumoto and Hyisung C. Hwang

Culture has strong and pervasive influences on nonverbal communication. In America and Europe, people greet each other with a handshake and a smile. In East Asia, people bow to each other with their hands at their sides, whereas in Thailand, people bow with their hands in front of them as if in prayer. In the Middle East, people bow with their hands on their hearts. This chapter addresses the question of how and why these cultural differences occur—the cultural bases of nonverbal communication—focusing on cultural influences on nonverbal behaviors. We begin this chapter with a discussion of the origin and definition of culture because we believe that understanding the cultural bases of nonverbal communication requires a working definition of culture. Adopting a working definition of culture requires, in turn, a discussion of the origins of culture. We then describe how culture influences nonverbal behaviors through the important mediating variable of context. Culture does so by allowing people to create rules that are known as cultural norms that provide guidelines for appropriate behavior in specific contexts. Cultures also help people to create sanctions and punishments for norm transgressions. We believe that the function of culture is to provide guidelines for behavior that promote social coordination and reduce the potential for social conflict, which, in turn, facilitate group efficiency and ultimately aid survival. With this basic information concerning culture and its functions, we then discuss the cultural regulation of nonverbal communication. We argue

that the function of communication is to allow for the sharing of social intentions, which facilitates social coordination. Cultural norms provide rules for the regulation of expressive behaviors, including nonverbal behaviors, to allow for the sharing of social intentions as part of communication. We further argue that this underlying function of nonverbal communication vis-à-vis the function of culture is universal; the cultural norms and the manifestation of those norms in actual behavior, however, are different because of the various adaptations different human groups have made to survive in their ecological contexts. That is why there are differences across cultures. We review literature examining cultural differences in various channels of nonverbal communication and link those differences to the function of cultural norms. Behaviors make sense when viewed from the perspective of the culture in which the behavior is produced; they facilitate social coordination and reduce social chaos in those contexts. However, cultural differences in behavior can produce conflict in intercultural situations, a topic with which we end this chapter. WHAT IS CULTURE?

The Origins of Culture Gaining a better understanding of culture requires first a framework for understanding the sources of its origins. We believe that there are four such sources: ecology, resources, group life, and the evolved human mind and brain.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-004 APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, D. Matsumoto, H. C. Hwang, and M. G. Frank (Editors-in-Chief) Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

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Ecology. Humans exist in specific ecologies, and those ecologies have a major impact on the development of culture. One aspect of ecology that influences culture and that has received much research attention is climate, and in particular deviation from temperate climate (Van de Vliert, 2009). Humans need to regulate their body temperatures and have an easier time doing so in temperate climates, which happens to be around 22 °C (about 72 °F). Much colder or hotter climates make life more difficult and demanding, and these harsher climates require people to do more to adapt to their natural environment. Harsher climates create greater risks of food shortage and spoilage, stricter diets, and more health problems; furthermore, infectious and parasitic diseases tend to be more frequent in hotter climates, and death from exposure is more frequent in colder climates (Matsumoto & Fletcher, 1996). Demanding climates require special clothing, housing, and working arrangements as well as special organizations for the production, transportation, trade, and storage of food. People in hotter climates tend to organize their daily activities more around shelter, shade, and temperature changes that occur during the day. For example, Spanish culture encourages the stopping of work in the midafternoon, during the hottest time of the day, and reopening later, pushing back the working hours. There, it is not uncommon for people to have dinner outside at 11:00 p.m. or even midnight. People who live nearer the poles may organize their lives around available sunlight. In psychological terms, more demanding cold or hot climates elicit a chain of needs shared by all inhabitants in an area (Van de Vliert, 2009). Another ecological factor that influences the development of culture is population density. This is the ratio of the number of people that live in an area relative to the size of the area. Some areas have lots of people living in a very small space, like New York City, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Mexico City; that is, they have large population density. Other areas have only a few people living in a very large area, like Alaska, Greenland, or the northern island of Hokkaido in Japan; they have low population density. What affects cultures even more is the number of people in an area relative to the amount of arable 78

land in that area—the amount of land on which food can grow to sustain the people in that area. There are other ecological factors that influence the development of culture as well. For instance, global changes in climate across history have affected human evolution (Behrensmeyer, 2006), as has the incidence and prevalence of infectious diseases in different regions of the world (Murray & Schaller, 2010). Contact with other cultures will also affect a culture; this is especially true for immigrants, who come to a land with an already existing culture and must deal with the process of acculturation. Resources. A second source that influences the development of cultures is resources. These include natural resources such as the presence or absence of water or land to grow food or to raise animals. A land void of natural resources will encourage teamwork and community spirit among its members and interrelationships with other groups that have abundant resources in order to survive and meet essential needs. In a land with plentiful natural resources, a group will have less need for attributes linked to social coordination or cooperation; in a land with fewer natural resources, groups require greater cooperation and cohesion. A major type of resource that influences cultures today is money or affluence, which itself is a human cultural creation (Van de Vliert, 2009). Abundant money can help buffer the consequences of a lack of resources and harsh climates, which, in turn, have interesting psychological consequences. People and groups with more money can afford to be less in sync with others, as cooperation is not as essential for survival. People and groups with less money need to cooperate to survive. Importantly, the interaction between ecological factors and affluence drives the development of cultures (Van de Vliert, 2009). Groups that live in harsh climates but that have the resources to deal with them produce ways of living that are different than groups that live in harsh climates but that do not have the resources (i.e., money) to deal with those climates. Group life. A third source for the origin of human culture is the fact that humans are social animals and live in groups. Humans learned many hundreds of

The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication

thousands of years ago that living in groups was better than living alone. However, there are consequences to group life. On one hand, a major advantage of group life is that groups are more efficient because they allow members to divide labor. This allows groups to accomplish more than any one individual can, which is functional and adaptive for all group members, thereby increasing the potential for survival. On the other hand, a disadvantage is the potential for social conflict and chaos because individual members are very different. Social coordination, therefore, becomes very important to reduce the possibility of conflict and chaos and to increase efficiency. The evolved human mind and brain. A fourth source for the origin of human cultures is the evolved human mind and brain. One major component of the human mind is the fact that humans have basic needs that are ultimately related to reproductive success (Boyer, 2000; Buss, 2001). These include physical needs—the need to eat, drink, sleep, handle waste, and reproduce—and safety and security needs—the need for hygiene, shelter, and warmth (recall our earlier discussion about the importance of climate). These needs are universal to all people of all cultures. Over the course of history, people needed to solve a host of distinct social problems to adapt and, thus, to achieve reproductive success. These social problems include forming and then negotiating complex status hierarchies, forming successful work and social groups, attracting mates, fighting off potential rivals for food and sexual partners, giving birth and raising children, and battling nature (Buss, 1988, 1991, 2001). In fact, we need to do these things in our everyday lives today as well. Thus, basic needs are associated with social motives (Hogan, 1982; Sheldon, 2004), which include the motive to achieve and the motive to affiliate with others, and these social motives are part of the evolved human mind and brain. Nature and evolution endowed humans with a set of cognitive capacities that aid humans in adapting to environments and addressing their needs. One of these is language. Humans have the unique ability to symbolize their physical and metaphysical world (Premack, 2004), to create sounds

representing those symbols (morphemes), to create rules connecting those symbols to meaning (syntax and grammar), and to put this all together in sentences. Moreover, humans have developed writing systems to reduce oral expressions to words on paper. This book is a uniquely human product. Other cognitive abilities that humans are endowed with are those that allow for complex social cognition. One of the most important thinking abilities that humans have is the ability to believe that other people are intentional agents—that is, that others have wishes, desires, and intentions to act and behave (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005). Furthermore, people know that others know that they have intentions. Being in the “public eye,” therefore, takes on special meaning for humans, because they know that others can make judgments about them. Humans also have causal beliefs, which form the basis for attributions. Morality, a uniquely human product, is rooted in this unique human cognitive ability. This ability apparently turns on in humans around 9 months of age (Tomasello, 1999), which is a critical time of development of many cognitive abilities. Other animals can and do view themselves as somewhat intentional agents. However, one thing that differentiates humans from other animals is the fact that we have the cognitive ability to share our intentions with others. One of the major functions of language is to allow for us to communicate a shared intentionality (Tomasello & Herrmann, 2010; we return to this point later in this chapter). Shared intentionality may be at the heart of social coordination, which allows for the creation of human culture (Fiske, 2000). Another important ability that humans have is the ability to continually build upon improvements. When humans create something that is good, it usually evolves to a next generation in which it is even better. This is true for computers, cars, audio music players, and, unfortunately, weapons. Tomasello, Kruger, and Ratner (1993) have called this the ratchet effect. Like a ratchet, an improvement never goes backward; it only goes forward and continues to improve on itself. The ratchet effect does not occur in other animals; monkeys may use twigs to catch insects, but they never improve on that tool. 79

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Our cognitive skills also include memory, which allows for the creation of histories, which, in turn, allows for the creation of traditions, customs, and heritage (Balter, 2010; Liu et al., 2005, 2009; Paez et al., 2008; Wang, 2006; Wang & Ross, 2007). Our cognitive skills also include the ability to think hypothetically and about the future. This not only allows us to plan things but also to worry about the uncertainty of the future, both of which form the basis of important cultural practices. People are also equipped with the ability to have emotions. Emotions are rapid, information processing systems that have evolved to aid humans in reacting to events that require immediate action and that have important consequences to one’s welfare with minimal cognitive processing (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000). Although emotions are part of an archaic, biologically innate system that we share with other animals, they also combine with our advanced cognitive abilities to produce uniquely human emotions that coevolved to aid humans in solving complex social problems (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012). Finally, people come equipped with personality traits. Humans around the world share a core set of traits that give them predispositions to adapt to their environments, to solve social problems, and to address their basic needs. Most research in this area has focused on what is known as the Big Five set of personality traits: Extraversion, Openness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness (McCrae & Costa, 1999; McCrae & Terracciano, 2005). Other traits may also be universal (Cheung, van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011). Summary. Humans live in groups, and groups exist in different ecologies and resources. Humans have needs that must be met to survive. Fortunately, humans do not come to the world as blank slates; they come preequipped with an evolved, naturally selected set of abilities and aptitudes that allows them to adapt and survive. Groups of people need to adapt their behaviors to their ecologies to maximize the use of their available resources to meet their needs; the abilities and aptitudes in the evolved human mind and brain give them the tools to adapt. These adaptations produce behaviors, ways of living, 80

ways of thinking, and ways of being. These ways become part of the contents of a group’s culture. Group life requires social coordination, which facilitates group efficiency. If groups are not coordinated, there is social chaos. Thus, humans need to keep social order and be coordinated to accomplish tasks efficiently and to survive. Human groups produce rules for behavior to facilitate coordination, and create sanctions and punishments for behavior that threatens coordination. To achieve social order and coordination and to avoid chaos, human groups therefore must create rules, or systems of living, and ways of being. This is culture. Culture, therefore, provides a system that facilitates social coordination while reducing social chaos to maximize group efficiency and to ultimately facilitate survival and well-being. At the same time, cultural differences occur because different groups produce different solutions to the problem of adaptation because of differences in the contexts in which they exist.

A Definition of Culture The term “culture” is an abstract metaphor for the ways that each group develops to meet needs related to survival. As a metaphor, culture refers to a multitude of concepts. Culture can be used to describe activities or behaviors, refer to heritage or tradition of a group, describe rules and norms, describe learning or problem solving, define the organization of a group, or refer to the origins of a group (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952/1963). Culture can refer to general characteristics; food and clothing; housing and technology; economy and transportation; individual and family activities; community and government; welfare, religion, and science; and sex and the life cycle (Barry, 1980; Berry et al., 1992; Murdock, Ford, & Hudson, 1971). Laypersons use the concept of culture to describe and explain a broad range of activities, behaviors, events, and structures. Over the years, many scholars have attempted to define culture. Tylor (1865) defined culture as all capabilities and habits learned as members of a society. Linton (1936) referred to culture as social heredity. Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952/1963) defined culture as patterns of and for behavior

The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication

acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinct achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts. Rohner (1984) defined culture as the totality of equivalent and complementary learned meanings maintained by a human population, or by identifiable segments of a population, and transmitted from one generation to the next. Jahoda (1984) argued that culture is a descriptive term that captures not only rules and meanings but also behaviors. Pelto and Pelto (1975) defined culture in terms of personality, whereas Geertz (1975) defined it as shared symbol systems transcending individuals. Berry et al. (1992) defined culture simply as the shared way of life of a group of people, and Baumeister (2005) defined culture as an information-based system that allows people to live together and to satisfy their needs. Culture has been defined in many diverse ways because the concept of culture covers broad domains related to almost anything and everything about human activities or products. Moreover, contemporary cultures are changing and evolving quickly; thus, defining cultures is challenging. We define culture as a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life. Culture exists first to enable groups to meet basic needs of survival. Culture helps people meet others, procreate and produce offspring, put food on the table, provide shelter from the elements, and care for our daily biological essential needs. However, human culture also allows for complex social networks and relationships, and provides rules to regulate and reduce (but not eliminate) the inevitable conflicts that emerge. It allows humans to enhance the meaning of normal, daily activities. It allows the pursuit of happiness. It allows humans to be creative in music, art, and drama; to seek recreation and to engage in sports and organized competition, whether in the local community Little League or the Olympic Games; to search the sea and space; and to create mathematics, an achievement no other species can claim, as well as an educational system. Human culture allows people to go to the moon, to create a research laboratory on Antarctica, and to

send probes to Mars and Jupiter. Unfortunately, it also allows humans to have wars, to create weapons of mass destruction, and to create terrorists. Human culture does all this by creating and maintaining complex social systems, institutionalizing and improving cultural practices, creating beliefs about the world, and communicating the meaning system to other humans and subsequent generations. It is the product of the evolution of the human mind and complex cognitive abilities in response to the specific ecologies in which groups live and the resources available to them to live. Culture as a meaning and information system results from the interaction between universal biological needs and functions, universal social problems created to address those needs, and the ecological environment in which people live. Culture is a solution to the problem of groups’ adaptations to their contexts to address their social motives and biological needs. As adaptational responses to the environment, cultures help to select behaviors, attitudes, values, and opinions that may optimize the tapping of resources to meet survival needs. Those guidelines are passed along from one generation to the next so that future generations do not have to keep reinventing the wheel. Cultural products are always ratcheted up, never down.

The Elements of Culture The elements of culture can be divided roughly into two major categories—the objective and subjective elements (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952/1963; Triandis, 1972). The objective elements of culture involve objective, explicit elements that are physical, such as architecture, clothes, foods, art, eating utensils, and the like; objective elements of culture typically survive people as physical artifacts. The subjective elements of culture include all those parts of a culture that do not survive people as physical artifacts; thus, they include psychological processes such as attitudes, values, beliefs, norms, and such. Understanding the cultural bases of nonverbal communication requires a focus on the subjective elements of culture. Many domains of the subjective elements of culture have been studied, such as values (Hofstede, 2001; Schwartz, 2004), beliefs (M. H. Bond et al., 81

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2004; Leung et al., 2002), attitudes, worldviews and self-concepts (Heine & Hamamura, 2007; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2005), and norms. Of these various domains, norms are the most relevant for our discussion. Norms are generally accepted standards of behavior for any cultural group. Norms comprise behaviors that members of a culture have defined as the most appropriate in any given situation. Recent research has uncovered norms for describing the behaviors of people of other cultures (Shteynberg, Gelfand, & Kim, 2009) as well as norms for controlling one’s expressive behavior when emotional (Matsumoto, Yoo, et al., 2009; Matsumoto et al., 2008). Not only do norms proscribe socially appropriate, desirable behaviors but they also define what is inappropriate and undesirable. Thus, cultures generate social sanctions and punishments for norm transgressions. These sanctions and punishments may be explicit, as in the letter of the law and jail time, to implicit, such as social isolation. Normal behavior is related to social rituals in cultures. Rituals are culturally prescribed conduct or any kind of established procedure or routine. These include rituals for greetings, daily functions, or religious ceremonies. Rituals are important because they reinforce cultural meaning systems. Some rituals are related to politeness, and many cultures reify norms of politeness in shared behavioral patterns called etiquette. This is a code of behavior that describes expectations for social behavior according to contemporary cultural and conventional norms within a cultural group. Etiquette is a large part of many cultures, although cultures often differ in what is polite and, thus, appropriate and “good.” Etiquette-related behaviors are considered signs of maturity and sanity within each culture. An important dimension of cultural variability with respect to norms involves a concept known as tightness versus looseness (Pelto, 1968). Tightness–looseness has two key components: the strength of social norms, or how clear and pervasive norms are within societies, and the strength of sanctioning, or how much tolerance there is for deviance from norms within societies. Pelto (1968) argued 82

that traditional societies varied in their expression of and adherence to social norms. In his work, the Pueblo Indians, Hutterites, and the Japanese are examples of tight societies in which norms were expressed very clearly and in which severe sanctions were imposed on those who deviated from norms. By contrast, he identified the Skolt Lapps of northern Finland and the Thais as loose societies, in which norms were expressed through a wide variety of alternative channels and in which there was a general lack of formality, order, and discipline and a high tolerance for deviant behavior (see also Gelfand et al., 2011). CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON BEHAVIORS: THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT Out of all the myriad behaviors possible in the human repertoire, cultures help to focus people’s behaviors and attention on a few limited alternatives to maximize their effectiveness, given their resources and their environment (Poortinga, 1990). Culture can be viewed as influencing behaviors in several ways, depending on whether culture is viewed as antecedent to or a consequence of behavior, and whether culture is viewed as an enabler or restrictor of behavior (Lonner & Adamapolous, 2000). Culture can be understood as enabling some behaviors or restricting others, and via the construction of rules that enable behavior or restrict behavior (see Table 4.1). Culture influences behavior by creating norms through an important mediator: context. As inherently social animals, humans live in a succession of multiple, different contexts. Cultures produce norms by imbuing contexts with specific meaning and information concerning appropriate and inappropriate ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. There are many different aspects of context, including time, place, interactants, the content of activities or conversations, the reasons why the interactions are occurring in the first place, and the possibility of any future interactions between the same interactants. All of these factors combine to produce the unique contexts in which we live our lives. Next, we focus on two major components of context: settings and social roles.

The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication

TABLE 4.1 Different Types of Cultural Influences on Behaviors in Context Culture viewed as Antecedent to behavior Culture viewed as

Inventing behavior Restricting behavior

Consequence of behavior

Culture as an enabling cause of Culture as the construction of behavior rules that enable behavior Culture as a restrictive cause of Culture as the construction of behavior rules that restrict behavior

Settings Cultures ascribe meanings to settings. Because different settings are associated with different cultural meanings, these differences influence behavior. Being in public, for example, means something different than being in private, and individuals regulate their behaviors much more in public than in private (Matsumoto, 2012). The regulating effect of public settings may be due to the fact that being in public is associated with the cognitive representation that others have knowledge of oneself and can make causal attributions and judgments about oneself (Baumeister, 2005; Tomasello, 1999). Thus, people watch what they do because they are concerned about how they will be judged by others. This concern is also likely activated in the mirror effect—the fact that individuals often regulate various aspects of their behavior when they see themselves as others see them (Mor & Winquist, 2002). Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the importance of setting, there has been very little research in psychology on this topic. Years ago, Altman (1975) differentiated between primary and secondary private settings, the former being those that people feel belong to them exclusively and are central to their identities, the latter being public settings that are used with such regularity that one develops a proprietary orientation toward them (see also Chapter 8, this handbook). We believe that the cultural meaning of settings revolves around three components: beliefs about being watched, uncertainty, and anxiety. Settings are associated with a set of beliefs about the degree to which

others may be watching or judging oneself and others associated with oneself (e.g., one’s family, friends, others of the same ethnic group, etc.). These may also include beliefs concerning the degree to which the judgments of others have potentially positive or negative consequences for oneself or others, and consequences to future relationships with oneself or others. Settings are also associated with some degree of uncertainty, especially concerning one’s knowledge about how others may think, feel, or act. Because of this uncertainty, different settings are associated with different degrees of anxiety about how others may evaluate oneself. Uncertainty and ambiguity inherent to settings, and the anxiety associated with them, are likely to produce regulatory effects on behavior. Guerin (1986) suggested that inhibitory contexts, in which the emotions, behaviors, cognitions, and intentions of others are uncertain, influence individuals to be more cautious of their behaviors. Inhibitory contexts are those in which one’s behaviors are under the watchful eyes of unknown or less familiar others, and such contexts produce increased conformity in behaviors to cultural norms because of the observation. Because settings are associated with beliefs that others may be judging oneself and that those beliefs have potentially important consequences for oneself and others, they are likely to produce a high degree of regulatory effects on behavior. Norms are created to provide this regulation. Settings associated with the belief that one’s behavior is not judged, that judgments of others have no consequences for oneself, and/or in which there is little ambiguity of 83

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the actions of others are likely to produce much less regulatory effects on behavior (e.g., the anonymity of the Internet or a dark theater). Being in a crowded company conference room with one’s prospective employers is a very different setting than being in an anonymous Internet chat room, and because of these psychological differences in the meaning of these settings, they produce different effects on behavior.

Interactants and Social Roles Cultures ascribe meaning to individuals and their social roles. Social roles define the expectations for behavior for individuals who occupy a position in a social system. These expectations define the behaviors that each culture expects its members to engage in to achieve the goal of living in a culturally appropriate fashion. Social roles are like scripts in a play (Goffman, 1959), as they delineate the types of behaviors that are expected in specific situational contexts based on the specific meanings ascribed to that context. Because cultures define the meaning of situational contexts, the scripts associated with the contexts are culturally dependent. Cultural differences in the meaning of specific situational contexts reflect cultural differences in the specific role expectations associated with different situations across cultures. The interaction between individuals with different social roles produces different culturally prescribed meanings to interactions. At least two studies have examined what these meanings may be. Marwell and Hage (1970), for instance, suggested the existence of three dimensions to describe the nature of role dyads: Intimacy, Visibility, and Regulation. McAuley, Bond, and Kashima (2002) obtained ratings of role dyads in Australia and Hong Kong and demonstrated the existence of four dimensions used by persons of both cultures to organize these relationships: Complexity, Equality, Adversarialness, and Containment.

Summary Mental processes and behaviors do not occur in a vacuum, even in the laboratory (or, perhaps, especially in the laboratory); rather, they occur in a particular setting with specific interactants, both of which have been imbued with cultural meaning. Norm-driven human behaviors can be considered 84

role performances within a specific context. Cultures create overall and context-specific norms to aid humans to achieve social coordination and to avoid social chaos in a socially complex environment. Cultural norms are learned rules for thinking, feeling, and behaving in specific contexts that provide guidelines and rewards for acceptable behaviors, and sanctions and punishments for unacceptable behavior. Many norms have to do with the regulation of expressive behavior, which is associated with nonverbal behaviors and nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication cannot exist without some basis of culture as we communicate with others verbally and nonverbally to convey information and to share intentions. Thus, culture and nonverbal communication are dependent on and influential to each other simultaneously. CULTURAL REGULATION OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Understanding how and why cultures regulate nonverbal communication requires a basic understanding of the function of communication in general. Humans have a very complex and differentiated signal system in the body, including face, voice, gesture, and whole body movements. Although other animals share the same channels of behavior, human capabilities in these channels, especially the face and voice, are considerably more elaborate than those of nonhuman animals. Moreover human communication involves the unique use of verbal language. As mentioned earlier, the evolution of these communicative abilities coincide with the evolution of the human brain and correspond to the evolution of self–other knowledge and the ability to know that other people not only are intentional agents but can share intentions (Tomasello et al., 1993). Therefore, we understand the function of communication to be for the purpose of facilitating the sharing of social intentions. Further, we assume that evolved capabilities for language and other modes of expressive behavior occurred to facilitate human sharing of social intentions. The sharing of social intentions allows humans to achieve social coordination and reduces the possibility of social chaos, in turn facilitating group efficiency and ultimately impacting survival.

The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication

Cultural influences on communication should affect both verbal and nonverbal communication. With regard to the latter, we propose that cultures produce norms that provide guidelines for the appropriate expression of nonverbal behaviors and other forms of nonverbal communication in specific contexts to facilitate the sharing of social intentions. Culturally moderated nonverbal behaviors, in turn, increase social coordination and reduce social chaos, thereby facilitating group efficiency and survival (see Figure 4.1). In broad terms, cultures have norms related to overall expressivity that is encouraged or discouraged in specific cultures (see Table 4.2). Expressive cultures are likely to facilitate the greater use of nonverbal behaviors. These cultures have developed norms that encourage the broad, outward expression of nonverbal behaviors, such as more animated facial expressions and gestures, voices with higher intensity and range, direct gaze, relaxed and open postures, and closer interpersonal spacing. These norms have evolved over time because they served a purpose in specific ecological and environmental contexts that facilitated group efficiency, social coordination, and the sharing of intentions, all of which ultimately impacted survival. Reserved cultures are more likely to facilitate the relatively less

Increases

use of nonverbal behaviors. These cultures have developed norms that encourage restricting one’s expressive behaviors, facial expressions, and gestures and that use softer voices and avoid direct gaze, with more rigid, closed postures at relatively greater distances. These norms also evolved over time because they served a purpose in specific ecological and environmental contexts that facilitated group efficiency, social coordination, and the sharing of intentions, all of which ultimately impacted survival. Nonverbal behaviors serve the same general function across cultures (i.e., to facilitate the sharing of social intentions); however, the norms governing those behaviors (i.e., to be expressive or reserved) differ depending on the ecological–cultural context within which those behaviors occur. The distinction between Expressive and Reserved cultures is related to Hall’s (1966, 1973) distinction of high- and low-context cultures, as well as Watson’s (Watson, 1970; Watson & Graves, 1966) classification of contact and noncontact cultures. Our distinction is different, however, as we believe there is sufficient evidence to suggest that cultural differences encompass the entire constellation of nonverbal behaviors involved in interaction. At the same time, we do not believe that there is a unidimensional, positive relationship among all of the various channels

Social Complexity

Decreases

Need for Social Order

Group Life

Culture as a Meaning and Information System

Socially Appropriate Behavior

Norms Regarding Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal Behaviors

Facilitates

FIGURE 4.1. The function of nonverbal communication vis-à-vis the function of culture. 85

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TABLE 4.2 A Typology of Broad Cultural Differences in Nonverbal Behaviors Type of cultural norms Channel Face Gesture Voice Gaze Interpersonal space and touch Posture

Expressive Animated facial expressions, frequent displays of emotions, use of face to amplify and illustrate speech More speech illustrating gestures, larger motions, higher frequency of emblem usage Louder voices, larger range, higher speech rates More direct gaze during interactions Closer distances in interaction, more frequent touching More relaxed, open postures

of nonverbal behaviors or that cultural norms exist only for overall expressivity. Cultures also facilitate more or less behaviors differentially across channels (facial expressions, eye behavior, body behavior), and there are specific norms for specific channels in specific contexts, and these depend on the channel and behavior being regulated and their function. We next discuss what the available evidence suggests in terms of channel and context specificity for cultural norms.

Cultural Norms Concerning Emotions and Emotional Expressions Culturally moderated emotions. The channel that has been studied the most with regard to cultural differences and norms is that of emotional expressions, especially in the face. Cultures create norms concerning the regulation of emotion and emotional expressions to facilitate social coordination through the sharing of intentions because emotions are primary motivators of behavior (Tomkins, 1962, 1963) and have important social functions (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). By regulating emotions via norms, cultures ensure that behaviors follow culturally prescribed scripts, increasing social coordination and decreasing social chaos. Culturally driven expression regulation occurs in multiple ways. First, culture regulates expressive behaviors by calibrating the emotion system to culturally available events so that individuals learn what to become emotional about in the first place. 86

Reserved Fewer facial expressions, less emotions, more controlled expressions, less animated expressions Fewer speech illustrating gestures, smaller motions, lower frequency of emblem usage Softer voices, diminished range, lower speech rates Less direct gaze during interactions Farther distances in interaction, less frequent touching More rigid, closed postures

Culturally moderated emotions provide guidelines to individuals for the kinds of emotions they should have in specific contexts, in turn regulating the kinds of expressive behavior that will be produced because of differences in emotional reactions. Walking on dark streets late at night will evoke fear in some cultures but not in others, and these different emotional reactions occur because of culturally learned differences about the meaning of that specific context. Differences in expressive behavior, in turn, fall out of these differences in evoked emotions. Cultural display rule norms. Culture also regulates the nonverbal expressive behaviors that occur as a result of emotion elicitation so that individuals learn what kinds of emotional reactions to have after an emotion is elicited and the range of acceptable behaviors for individuals to engage in after emotions occur. The norms governing these rules of expressive displays are known as cultural display rules (Ekman & Friesen, 1969), and they account for cultural differences in emotional expression. These are rules learned early in childhood that help individuals manage and modify their emotional expressions depending on social circumstances. They were first invoked to explain the cultural differences in expressive behavior that occurred in Friesen’s (1972) study comparing the facial expressions of emotion of American and Japanese students as they watched emotionally evocative films (see also Chapter 10, this handbook).

The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication

After the original inception of the concept of display rules, cross-cultural research on them was dormant until Matsumoto’s (1990) study examining display rules in Americans and Japanese, and a similar study documenting differences in display rules among four ethnic groups within the United States (Matsumoto, 1993). Later, Matsumoto and colleagues created the Display Rule Assessment Inventory, where participants choose one of six behavioral responses when they experience different emotions with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers (Matsumoto, Takeuchi, Andayani, Kouznetsova, & Krupp, 1998; Matsumoto, Yoo, Hirayama, & Petrova, 2005). They demonstrated cultural differences in display rules, and they provided evidence for its internal and temporal reliability and for its content, convergent, discriminant, external, and concurrent predictive validity with personality. Individuals of all cultures learn some degree of overall expression regulation through display rules. The existence of overall expression regulation via

display rule norms across contexts is consistent with the idea of Expressive versus Reserved cultures described earlier and with worldwide data concerning display rules. Matsumoto et al. (2008) examined universal and culture-specific aspects to display rules in more than 30 countries, reporting several pancultural effects. Individuals of all cultures reported that they suppress their expressions in some contexts, exaggerate their expressions in others, and express their feelings as is in others. Individuals of all cultures had a display rule norm for greater expressivity toward ingroups than toward outgroups. However, there were also cultural differences, especially linked to culture-level individualism versus collectivism. Collectivistic cultures were associated with less expressivity overall than individualistic cultures, suggesting that overall expression management for all emotions is central to the preservation of social order in these cultures (see Figure 4.2). This finding is commensurate with the behavioral results from previous studies (Friesen, 1972; Matsumoto &

Zimbabwe

Canada

Overall Expressivity Endorsement

0.51

Denmark Mexico

0.48

0.45

0.42

Brazil

Belgium

India

Australia New Zealand

Netherlands

Portugal

USA

Hungary

Poland People’s Republic of China Japan Turkey South Korea Lebanon Germany Israel Italy Croatia Malaysia Switzerland Russia Indonesia

Hong Kong 0.39

100

Individualism

FIGURE 4.2. Graphical representation of the relationship between individualism and overall expressivity endorsement. From “Mapping Expressive Differences Around the World: The Relationship Between Emotional Display Rules and Individualism Versus Collectivism,” by D. Matsumoto et al., 2008, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39, p. 66. Copyright 2008 by Sage. Reprinted with permission. 87

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Kupperbusch, 2001; Matsumoto, Willingham, & Olide, 2009). Individualism was positively associated with higher expressivity norms in general and for positive emotions in particular. Furthermore, there were culture- and contextspecificity in display rule norms. Individualism was positively associated with endorsement of expressions of all emotions toward ingroups but was negatively correlated with negative emotions and was positively correlated with happiness and surprise toward outgroups. Thus, people in individualistic cultures learn to express their emotions to their ingroup members, whereas people in collectivistic cultures learn to suppress or regulate their expressions, even to their ingroups. Toward outgroups, people in individualistic cultures learn to express less negative and more positive emotions, whereas people in collectivistic cultures learn to express more negative and less positive ones. Cumulatively, these findings suggest a fairly nuanced view of the relationship between culture and display rules that varies as a function of type of emotion, context, and culture (Matsumoto et al., 2008).

Cultural Norms Regarding the Perception of Other’s Emotional Expressions As discussed in Chapter 10, there are many crosscultural similarities in how facial expressions of emotions are perceived. Not only are the seven universal facial expressions panculturally recognized (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Matsumoto, 2001) but there is pancultural similarity in judgments of relative intensity among faces; that is, when comparing expressions, people of different countries agree on which is more strongly expressed (Ekman et al., 1987; Matsumoto & Ekman, 1989). There is also cross-cultural agreement in the association between perceived expression intensity and inferences about subjective experiences (Matsumoto, Kasri, & Kooken, 1999) and in the secondary emotions portrayed in an expression (Biehl et al., 1997; Ekman et al., 1987; Matsumoto & Ekman, 1989). This agreement may exist because of overlap in the semantics of the emotion categories, antecedents and elicitors of emotion, or in the facial configurations themselves. However, there are cultural differences in emotion judgments as well, and these differences 88

presumably occur because of differential cultural norms that govern how the emotional expressions of others should be interpreted. For example there are cultural differences in the absolute levels of recognition across cultures; Americans typically have higher agreement rates when judging emotions than observers from other countries (Biehl et al., 1997; Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Matsumoto, 1989, 1992; Matsumoto et al., 2002). There are also cultural differences in ratings of the intensity of expressions; for example, Japanese tend to rate expressions lower in intensity than Americans (Biehl et al., 1997; Ekman et al., 1987; Matsumoto, 1990, 1993; Matsumoto et al., 1999, 2002). Presumably some cultures facilitate the perception and interpretation of others’ emotional expressions, whereas others do not. These cultural differences likely occur in service to communication style preferences across cultures that allow for the sharing of social intentions but in different ways. One aspect of communication that is culturally moderated refers to the degree to which cultures moderate the relative contributions of context when judging others’ emotions. Despite the fact that facial expressions always occur in context in real life, most mono- or cross-cultural judgment studies presented them fairly acontextually. Writers have long debated the relative contribution of face and context in contributing to emotion messages by studying congruent and incongruent face–context combinations (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954; Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1988; Fernberger, 1928; Russell & Fehr, 1987). One type of study examines the linkage between an emotion-eliciting context and a facial expression, which we have called response linkage (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2010). Studies involving congruent response linkages have found an additive effect (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954; Knudsen & Muzekari, 1983), which probably occurred because of the increased signal clarity in the overall emotion message when two different signal sources provide the same message. Interestingly, studies involving incongruent response linkages have generally demonstrated a face primacy effect, indicating that the signals in the face tend to override the signals provided by the context (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1988; Ekman, O’Sullivan, & Matsumoto, 1991; Frijda, 1969; Goldberg, 1951; Nakamura, Buck, & Kenny, 1990).

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Context effects also exist. Masuda et al. (2008) presented faces depicting emotions imbedded within a group of other faces also depicting emotions, and they asked American and Japanese observers to label the emotion of the central figure. Americans were more likely to produce labels consistent with the central figure despite the emotions portrayed by the others, whereas Japanese were more influenced by the others’ expressions when labeling the central figure. To clarify this literature, Matsumoto, Hwang, and Yamada (2012) conducted two studies involving observers from the United States, Japan, and South Korea who judged facial expressions of anger, sadness, and happiness presented together with a congruent or incongruent emotion-eliciting context. When faces were congruent with contexts, the agreement rates in judgments were near perfect, with no cultural differences. This suggested that previously documented cultural differences in emotion recognition rates may have been the result of methodological artifacts because observers were asked to make judgments of emotion solely from faces. In reality, such judgments are made from cues from both faces and contexts, and when multiple cues are given, cultural differences are eliminated. When faces and contexts were incongruent, there were both face and context effects, and the relative contributions of each were moderated by culture. American judgments were more influenced by faces, whereas Japanese and South Korean judgments were more influenced by context. The results provided a more nuanced view of how culture and type of emotion moderate judgments of faces in context by showing how face and context effects occur simultaneously, and how both cultural similarities and differences existed in the judgments. Cultures create norms concerning the regulation of emotion and emotional expressions to facilitate social coordination by sharing social intentions because emotions are primary motivators of behavior (Tomkins, 1962, 1963) and have important social functions (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). Cultures achieve emotional expression regulation by moderating the types of emotions people have in specific contexts in the first place, by regulating people’s expressive behaviors when emotions are elicited

(via cultural display rules), and by regulating the way in which people perceive the emotional expressions of others. Norms facilitating these cultural differences are often specific to the type of emotion (because different emotions have different functions and prime different behaviors) and context (setting, interactant) in which emotions are elicited, and they are even specific to gender (see Chapter 6, this handbook). This degree of specificity occurs in response to the complexity of the emotion system and its functions. Cultural norms regulating this system serve the purpose of allowing individual members to share social intentions, thereby facilitating social coordination.

Cultural Norms Concerning Gestures As described in Chapter 12 in this handbook, gestures are body movements (primarily hands, although they occur in head and face as well) that are used as part of the human communication system. Gestures are interesting because they are a form of embodied cognition; that is, they are movements that express some kind of thought or the process of thinking (Kinsbourne, 2006). They likely coevolved with adaptations in our physical anatomy and cognitive and language capabilities (Bouissac, 2006). This allowed for more rapid and efficient communication systems that went beyond words and verbal language (Capirci & Volterra, 2008). Two types of gestures are those that co-occur with speech, called speech illustrators, and those that can occur independent of speech, called emblems. The functions of these two types of gestures differ; thus, the functions associated with the cultural regulation (via cultural norms) of these two types of gestures differ. Cultural norms for speech illustrators. Speech illustrators are movements that are directly tied to speech and illustrate or highlight what is being said. There are different types of speech illustrators (Efron, 1941; Freedman & Hoffman, 1967); all are associated with verbal behavior on a moment-tomoment basis (Kita et al., 2007) and are directly tied to speech content, verbal meaning, and voice volume. They likely occur outside of or with minimal conscious awareness and intention. 89

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The study of culture and gestures has its roots in the work of Efron (Boas, Efron, & Foley, 1936; Efron, 1941), who examined the gestures of Sicilian and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants in New York City. Efron found that there were distinct gestures among immigrant Jews and Italians who adhered to the traditional culture but that those gestures disappeared as people were more assimilated into the larger American culture, and their children adopted the illustrators typical of Americans. The meaning and function of illustrators are likely similar across cultures and are likely a biologically innate product of our evolved capability for speech. However, cultures differ in norms concerning the appropriateness of both the amount and form of illustrative gestures, and in the frequency of illustrator usage, expansiveness, and duration. Expressive cultures, such as Latin American and the Middle Eastern cultures, encourage the use of large, illustrative gestures when speaking; they are highly animated in their gesticulation (Kendon, 1992, 1995). In Italy, for instance, one is expected to “speak with your hands.” Other cultures are much more reserved in their use of gestures. The British, for example, gesticulate less than Italians when speaking (Graham & Argyle, 1975), and large gestures are considered impolite in British culture. East Asian cultures discourage the use of such gestures, especially when in public; thus, Asians are even more reserved in their gesticulation. As mentioned previously, differences in cultural norms for overall expressivity are likely related to preferences in communication styles developed in different ecologies to facilitate the social sharing of intentions. Cultural differences also exist in the forms of illustrators. When counting, for example, Germans use the thumb for one, whereas Canadians and Americans use the index finger (Pika, Nicoladis, & Marentette, 2009). People of different cultures also use different gestures while describing motion events (Kita, 2000; Kita & Ozyurek, 2003; McNeill, 2000). When pointing, people in the United States and many Western European cultures use the index finger. People of some other cultures, however, learn to point with their middle finger, which of course resembles an obscene gesture in many cultures. Each of these different forms likely developed 90

for a particular reason in a culture, with the goal of facilitating the social sharing of intentions. Even though that reason has probably long disappeared, the forms of the gesture likely remain through cultural transmission across generations. Hybrid gestures refer to gestures that are originally associated with one language but come to be used with another, and they occur among immigrants and bi- or multilingual individuals. They were first observed by Efron (1941), who reported about a U.S.-born, Eastern Jewish individual who used a classical Eastern Jewish culture gesture (fist clenched, thumb outstretched, describing a scooping motion in the air as if digging out an idea) even when speaking English. Another type of hybrid gesture was described by Morris, Collett, Marsh, and O’Shaughnessy (1980), who described the combining of two different gestures (the flat hand chop threat gesture of Tunisia combined with the A-OK ring gesture to produce a ring-chop hybrid gesture). Other studies have documented that immigrants often use gestures from their original culture when using their second language (Scheflen, 1972). This cross-linguistic transfer of gestures seems to occur from a high-frequency gesture culture to a lowfrequency culture (Pika, Nicoladis, & Marentette, 2006) and, again, occurs because of the need to share intentions with others. As the cultural backgrounds of the others with whom intentions are shared are different, the gestures also need to evolve. Cultural norms for emblems. Emblems are gestures that convey verbal meaning independent of words. These are also known as symbolic gestures or emblematic gestures. Just as every culture has its own verbal language, every culture develops its own emblem vocabulary in gestures. Emblematic gestures are culture specific (and some are gender specific; see Ekman, 1976; Friesen, Ekman, & Wallbott, 1979; Morris et al., 1980). Unlike illustrators, emblems can occur with or without speech. Because emblems are like speech, cultures produce norms for their development and usage just as they do for words. Like words, emblems are produced to facilitate the sharing of social intentions. Furthermore, just as different cultures facilitate the differential use of vocal chords to produce different

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sounds and different symbols to produce words, they produce different symbolic gestures to represent words nonverbally, such as the peace sign (forefinger and middle finger up, palm facing outward or inward) or OK (thumb up, hand in fist) in North American culture. Because emblems are culture-specific, their meanings across cultures are often different and sometimes offensive. The North American A-OK sign, for example, means “OK” in some cultures, an orifice having sexual implications in some cultures, “money” in some cultures, and “zero” in some cultures (Morris et al., 1980). Placing both hands at the side of one’s head and pointing upward with the forefingers signals that one is angry in some cultures; in others it refers to the devil; and in others it means that one wants sex (is horny). The reversed peace sign—forefinger and middle finger up in a “V” shape, with the palm facing inward—is an insult in England and Australia meaning “screw you.” Thus, when emblems are interpreted across cultures, there is large probability that individuals will misinterpret the sender’s meaning of the emblem. Yet, they serve a functional purpose within the culture in which it is used, and that is to facilitate the social sharing of intentions. In addition to the hands, humans also gesture with their heads, the most common of which are the emblems “yes” and “no.” In the United States, as in many cultures of the world, these head gestures are nods and shakes of the head. However, whereas most people of most cultures nod their head yes and shake their head no, some cultures of the world do not do so. We also gesture with our bodies. In the United States and many other cultures, the emblem for “I don’t know” is a shrug. Shrugs are often displayed in our shoulders but also by our hands or even our faces. Although the movements associated with emblems are culture specific, there is universality in the content themes, functions, and reasons why cultures have a rich vocabulary of emblems (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013a; Morris et al., 1980). Rituals concerning greetings and salutations, references to locomotion or mental states, and insults are aspects of life that occur in all cultures, and for which it would be convenient to be able to signal without words. Thus, all cultures develop some emblems for these universal aspects of

life. The specifics of the movements associated with each emblem are different, however, as these are influenced by national and linguistic boundaries, cultural influx across history due to wars or immigration, and the richness of the word or phrase signaled in the verbal dictionaries of the cultures (Morris et al., 1980). Morris et al. (1980) argued that some emblems arose from gesturing particular symbols. For example, the crossed fingers for good luck was originally a surreptitious “sign of the cross” to signal to another one was a Christian, and then it became just the sign of the cross to ward off Satan, and now it is just “good luck.” Interestingly, the crossed fingers emblem did not occur in non-Christian cultures in Morris et al.’s study. Morris et al. (1980) called other emblems “relic” emblems in that they were trace representations of specific behaviors; for example, the Greek “moutza” is an insult emblem that involves a forward hand gesture, palm outward, with fingers spread upward. It was the original “talk to the hand” that we now see with younger people. The moutza is a representation of tossing garbage or urine, or possibly wiping cinders or other effluent on the face of another. Its origins were thought to be in ancient Greece where the public would toss their garbage or urine on prisoners as they were transported through the streets. This no longer occurs, but that gesture remains as a relic of that action, and today is used as an insult or a curse. Some emblems are becoming recognized across cultural boundaries despite differences in origin, such as come, go, hello, goodbye, yes, and no (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013a). These results are likely being driven by the strong influence of mass media around the world, particularly television, movies, and the Internet, where people can view the behaviors of others of different cultures and learn how to decode behaviors. These technologies may be helping to homogenize gestures into a worldwide emblem dictionary, and if so, it may be only a matter of time that a homogenized, universal set of emblematic gestures replaces culture-specific ones. Regardless of how emblems evolve across time, however, they will continue to serve the function of facilitating the social sharing of intentions. 91

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Many emblems are associated with nonverbal greetings. In most cultures, forms of greetings are important social rituals that bond people together. Many cultures differ, however, in the specific form of the greeting, such as the eyebrow flash, the handshake, the bow, bringing the hands together as if in prayer and bowing, and the like. These differences in forms probably arose because of context-specific differences in the past that had some kind of meaning at that time and that have been transmitted across generations and continue to currently survive. Regardless of the differences in form, however, there is underlying universality in the function of these nonverbal social greetings as an important part of every culture.

Cultural Norms for Gaze Gaze is a powerful nonverbal behavior, most likely because of its evolutionary roots in animals (see also Chapter 13, this handbook). Gaze is associated with dominance, power, or aggression in both humans and nonhuman animals (Fehr & Exline, 1987) as well as affiliation and nurturance (Argyle & Cook, 1976). The affiliative aspects of gazing begin in infancy (Fehr & Exline, 1987), as infants attend to adults as their source of care and protection. All cultures create norms concerning gaze because both aggression and affiliation are behavioral tendencies that are important for group stability and maintenance. Cultures differ according to whether they encourage or discourage power and status differences in a hierarchy, with hierarchical cultures affording power to status, but egalitarian cultures not (Hofstede, 2001; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001). Commensurately, cultures differ in the amounts of gaze considered appropriate when interacting with others. Arabs, for example, gaze much longer and more directly at their partners than do Americans (Hall, 1963; Watson & Graves, 1966). Watson (1970), who classified 30 countries as either a contact culture (those that facilitated physical touch during interaction) or a noncontact culture, found that contact cultures engaged in more gazing and had more direct orientations when interacting with others, less interpersonal distance, and more touching. Within the United States, ethnic groups differ in gaze and visual behavior (Exline, Jones, & Maciorowski, 1977; LaFrance & Mayo, 1976). 92

Status-oriented, hierarchical cultures have norms for members to avert gaze when interacting with higher status others as a form of deference. Egalitarian cultures tend to have norms for members to “look the other in the eye” when talking. These cultural differences can have dire consequences, especially in credibility assessment or deception detection. Around the world, a commonly held belief is that when people are not looking one straight in the eye, they are likely to be lying (Global Deception Research Team, 2006). These beliefs influence actual judgments; in one study (C. F. Bond, Omar, Mahmoud, & Bonser, 1990), American and Jordanians were videotaped while telling lies and truths, and the videotapes were shown to other Americans and Jordanians who made truth/lie judgments. In both cultures, individuals who avoided eye contact were judged to be deceptive. However, there is little or no empirical support for the belief that gaze is reliably associated with lying (DePaulo et al., 2003).

Cultural Norms for Vocal Behavior Nonverbal vocal cues are called paralinguistic cues and include the tone of voice, intonation, pitch, speech rate, use of silence, and volume (see Chapter11, this handbook). Early work on paralinguistic cues provided evidence that some specific emotional states were conveyed through the voice across cultures (Beier & Zautra, 1972; Matsumoto & Kishimoto, 1983; McCluskey & Albas, 1981; Scherer, 1986)—a view that has garnered more support in recent work (Sauter & Eimer, 2010; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010; Simon-Thomas, Keltner, Sauter, Sinicropi-Yao, & Abramson, 2009). Anger produces a harsh edge to the voice; the voice gets louder, and speech rates increase. Disgust produces “yuck” or gagging sounds, whereas fear produces higher pitch and sudden inhalations. Sadness produces softer voices and decreased speech rates. Furthermore, like some elements of emotional expression in the face, there are elements in the emotion expression in the voice that seem to be involuntary (Sauter & Eimer, 2010). The voice is used to illustrate and amplify speech, and much like speech illustrating gestures, cultures produce norms that moderate the use of

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these vocal characteristics in social interaction. Expressive cultures encourage the use of relatively louder voices with higher speech rates, whereas reserved cultures use softer voices with lower speech rates, especially in specific contexts. Additionally, pronunciations of some languages require the production of different sounds and rhythms in the voice that may be associated with different emotions (e.g., the guttural quality of some Germanic languages, the up and down rhythms of Mandarin). Although these vocal cues sound normal in the cultures in which they originated, in other cultures, it is easy to have negative reactions to these because they sound different and are associated with aversive emotions. Unfortunately, little cross-cultural research on this topic exists. In one of the very few studies in this area, Matsumoto and Hwang (2013b) compared the vocal characteristics of European Americans with Chinese, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern immigrants as they participated in various interviews concerning a mock crime. Across all questions and interviews, the Hispanic and Middle Eastern immigrants consistently spoke with higher vocal intensity and with higher speech rates than the Chinese and European Americans. These cultural differences open the door to examining how they may be related to the facilitation of the social sharing of intention differentially in different cultures.

Cultural Norms for Interpersonal Space and Touch The use of space in interpersonal interactions is called proxemics (see Chapter 15, this handbook). Hall’s (1966, 1973) classic work in this area specified four levels of interpersonal space use depending on social relationship type: intimate, personal, social, and public. He suggested that interpersonal distance helps to regulate intimacy by controlling sensory exposures, because the possibility of sensory stimulation (smells, sights, touch) is enhanced at closer distances. Hall suggested that in the United States, intimate distances are less than 18 in. (45.72 cm), personal distances range from 18 in. (45.72 cm) to 4 ft (1.2 m), social distances range from 4 ft (1.2 m) to 12 ft (3.66 m), and pubic distances are greater than 12 ft (3.66 m).

This meaning and function of space is a universal aspect of life that exists across cultures. Thus, cultures must regulate the use of space, as such regulation is necessary for social coordination; violations of space bring about aversive reactions (Sussman & Rosenfeld, 1978). People of all cultures appear to use space according to these four distinctions, but they differ in the size of the spaces they attribute to them. A study of people from five different cultures (American, Swedish, Greek, Southern Italian, and Scottish), for example, showed that the cultures were similar in the order of the distances for different types of transactions but that there were significant mean differences in the actual distances used (Little, 1968). Cultures around the Mediterranean, Middle East, or of Latin origin interact at closer distances. Arab males tend to sit closer to each other than American males, with more direct, confrontational types of body orientations (Watson & Graves, 1966). They also use greater eye contact and speak in louder voices. Arabs, at least in the past, learned to interact with others at distances close enough to feel the other person’s breath (Hall, 1963, 1966). Latin Americans tend to interact more closely than do individuals of European backgrounds (Forston & Larson, 1968), and Indonesians tend to sit closer than Australians (Noesjirwan, 1977, 1978). Italians interact more closely than either Germans or Americans, and Colombians interact at closer distances than do Costa Ricans (Shuter, 1976). When interacting with someone from their same culture, Japanese sat the farthest away, Venezuelans the closest, with Americans somewhere in the middle (Sussman & Rosenfeld, 1982). Interestingly, in the same study, when the nonnative English speakers spoke in English, they adopted the American conversational distance compared to when speaking with others from their home country in their native language. Cultural differences in the use of space even occur when individuals set dolls to interact with each other (Little, 1968). In addition to cultural norms, another major factor determining the amount of space used in interpersonal interactions is the relationship of the interactants; the specific content or affective tone of the interaction is also important (Little, 1968). Furthermore, much of the information we have 93

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about the use of interpersonal space involves dyadic interaction. We have much less research information about the use of space among groups of people, especially strangers, across cultures. Cultures also regulate touch. The meaning and function of touch is likely similar across cultures. Cultures differ in the amounts of touching behavior deemed acceptable, which facilitates social coordination. As mentioned earlier, Watson (1970) classified 30 countries as either a contact culture or a noncontact culture. Violations of the cultural rules regarding touch are likely to be interpreted in the same way as those of space, producing aversive consequences.

Cultural Norms for Whole Body Movements As discussed in Chapter 15 of this handbook, postures communicate attitudinal states and general affect, as opposed to the specific emotions communicated by face and voice. There is surprisingly little cross-cultural research on the production or interpretation of the meaning of postures across cultures. The studies that do exist suggest that people of different cultures interpret postures according to the same dimensions (i.e., positivity, status), but they place different weights of importance on specific aspects of these dimensions (Kudoh & Matsumoto, 1985; Matsumoto & Kudoh, 1987). One recent study examined whole body, triumphant displays of dominance that were produced by Olympic athletes after winning in agonistic encounters (Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014). Although all athletes produced some degree of these whole body expressive behaviors when they won their final matches, cultures moderated the amount of these behaviors produced. Athletes from status-oriented cultures tended to produce more of these whole body dominance behaviors than did athletes from more egalitarian cultures. Presumably status-oriented cultures facilitate the expression of nonverbal behaviors related to dominance more than will egalitarian cultures, apropos of the norms regarding social interaction and social coordination in these cultures. Gait refers to the pattern of movement of the body when walking. A handful of studies have examined cross-cultural differences in gait and 94

perceptions of it. Montepare and Zebrowitz (1993) obtained judgments from Korean observers of 5- to 70-year-old Americans as they walked from one end of a room to the other and back, and they compared those judgments to those previously obtained from American observers (Montepare & ZebrowitzMcArthur, 1988). There was cross-cultural agreement in perceptions of age, sex, strength, and happiness, but there were cross-cultural differences on perceptions of dominance. The authors suggested that some reactions to gait information may be universal, whereas other reactions may be more influenced by culture. There has also been some interesting research in the speed with which individuals across cultures typically move through their cities (Kirkcaldy, Furnham, & Levine, 2001; Levine & Bartlett, 1984; Levine, Lynch, Miyake, & Lucia, 1989; Levine & Norenzayan, 1999). These studies have demonstrated that pace is associated with punctuality, coronary heart disease, and a variety of attitudinal and personality traits. Such cultural differences open the door to future studies examining how these differences facilitate social coordination differently in different cultures. CONCLUSION: THE IMPLICATION OF THE CULTURAL REGULATION OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION TO INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Cultures facilitate different context-specific norms related to nonverbal communication and nonverbal behaviors because they facilitate social coordination and reduce the potential for social chaos, all of which enhance the possibility of the increased social sharing of intentions. These functions help groups to be efficient and, in turn, aid ultimately in survival. Cultural differences in nonverbal communication, therefore, make sense when viewed from the perspective of the culture in which the behaviors are produced. Cultural differences in nonverbal communication, however, are often difficult to experience and to interpret in intercultural interactions, especially because nonverbal behaviors are the “silent language” (Henley, 1977), and many people in

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intercultural interactions focus on the words being spoken and not the nonverbal behavior. Intercultural communication is more likely to be marred by uncertainty and ambiguity (Gudykunst & Nishida, 1984; Gudykunst, Yang, & Nishida, 1985; Hogg, Sherman, Dierselhuis, Maitner, & Moffitt, 2007), not only because of questions concerning the verbal messages but also because of cultural differences in the nonverbal messages that co-occur. These differences often lead to aversive reactions that increase the potential for misunderstanding, miscommunication, and misattributions about intent or character, which disrupts social coordination and increases the potential for conflict. It is easier for people from expressive cultures to judge those from reserved cultures as being untrustworthy, inscrutable, sly, deceptive, or shifty. At the same time, it is easier for people from reserved cultures to judge those from expressive cultures as arrogant, loud, rude, immature, or vulgar. These negative reactions occur unconsciously and automatically because they are rooted in cultural filters for interpreting the appropriateness of behavior that are developed early on through the process of enculturation within one’s culture. Many of these interpretations and attributions, however, may be misguided because the cultural filters with which one uses to interpret the nonverbal communications of others may not be the cultural framework within which the person’s behavior is rooted. One of the goals of intercultural interactions is to reduce the uncertainty inherent in the situation (Gudykunst, Nishida, & Chua, 1986; Gudykunst et al., 1985). One way to do this is to realize that cultural differences in nonverbal communications exist, that those differences exist for a reason that makes sense either now or in the past for that culture in which those behaviors are imbedded, that engaging with such differences may produce negative emotional reactions, and that these differences and reactions are a normal and inevitable part of the communication process. By creating these kinds of expectations, we can begin to ensure that intercultural interactions are not an obstacle but instead are a platform for staging the development and exchange of ideas and the sharing of goals in new and exciting ways not actualized by

intracultural communication. Understanding the cultural bases of nonverbal communication is an essential aid in our efforts to do so in today’s multicultural, pluralistic world.

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Chapter 5

The Developmental Arc of Nonverbal Communication: Capacity and Consequence for Human Social Bonds Caroline F. Keating

The birth of a baby is intensely nonverbal. There are oohs and ahs, groans and cries, laughter and tears. Gazes are drawn to faces, and bodies to one another. Earthy smells, powerful tactile sensations, and unguarded, raw emotions are released. What the body signals and receives overwhelms anything cast in language. This is what makes nonverbal communication so extraordinary for a species known for linguistic capabilities. During the most meaningful moments of our lives, words give way to nonverbal expression, etching our most significant social interchanges into our social-emotional brain. As extraordinary as nonverbal communication can be, it is also ordinary. Its lifelong, work-a-day function is to regulate social relationships (e.g., Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996; DePaulo, 1992; Riggio & Feldman, 2005; Saarni & Weber, 1999; see also Chapter 4, this handbook). By nonverbally messaging feelings, intentions, and desires and by scanning others for their signals, everyday social coordination is enabled. Sensitivity to nonverbal messages allows us to intuit when a person seeks to end a social interaction (e.g., intention movements), to sense whether they like us (e.g., immediacy, mimicry), and to anticipate when they are a threat (e.g., anger displays). Nonverbal communication, in both its ordinary and extraordinary form, stitches together the social fabric that envelops us at each life stage. Like other human competencies, the skillful exchange of nonverbal signals arcs across the life span, revealing a developmental time course for the capacity to send (encode) and receive (decode)

messages. The aim of this chapter is to describe ontogenetic patterns in nonverbal communication. Which signaling capacities develop at what age, what processes underlie them, and of what social consequence are they? To what degree are encoding and decoding processes an outcropping of phylogenetic or sociocultural factors? How does expressivity and receptivity to nonverbal messages change over time? I begin this chapter by applying basic conceptualizations of developmental change to nonverbal communication capacities. These processes help explain the emergence and modulation of expressive behavior; empirical illustrations help make the case. Added to the mix is the construct of the developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 2002), which embeds the complex interactions between exogenous and endogenous shapers of nonverbal communication within the individuals’ physical and social world. Nonverbal communication is inexorably linked to the development of the senses. Thus, the central section of the chapter is organized by selected, signaling modalities enabled by sensory development. I start with two of the earliest developing systems, touch and olfaction, and progress to those enabled by vision, meaning in this case communication through face and body movement. Missing but covered elsewhere is what the auditory sense enables (vocalization and paralanguage) and what motionless, morphological signaling systems convey (see Chapters 10 and 12, this handbook). The evidence trail for the three modalities reviewed here is tracked across the life span. Classic discoveries,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-005 APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, D. Matsumoto, H. C. Hwang, and M. G. Frank (Editors-in-Chief) Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

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theoretical models and mechanisms (where they exist), and “trending” developmental research are briefly reviewed. In essence, I have tried to hit conceptual and empirical highlights and to identify gaps in the developmental science of nonverbal communication. The focus of this chapter is on nonverbal communication in a traditional sense, whereby signals produced by one individual create change, intended or otherwise, in another (Smith, 1977). That people gesture when no else one is around (Pine, Gurney, & Fletcher, 2010) is a discussion I omit. Likewise, the role of nonverbal behavior in learning generally as well as the importance of the information that nonverbal actions send to the self (embodiment, to some; emotion regulation, to many) are largely set aside. Relationships between gesture and language development are not covered here (see Chapter 12, this handbook). These admittedly important omissions in the developmental story of nonverbal behavior keep this chapter true to my given mission of emphasizing interpersonal communication. GENERAL PROCESSES UNDERLYING THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Conceptualizations meant to account for development broadly are helpful in identifying patterns in the ontogeny of nonverbal communication. Three stand out: biological preparedness, involuntary to voluntary control, and differentiation. Each is influenced by aspects of the child’s physical and social environment or developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 1986, 2002).

Biological Preparedness Individuals are endowed with capacities to express some traits and to develop some behaviors more readily than others as well as to learn some things more easily than others; these are thought of as biologically prepared (Figueredo, Hammond, & McKiernan, 2006; Mineka & Ohman, 2002; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). The constraints and opportunities they manifest have phyletic, morphological, genetic, life-history, and environmental bases. Therefore, 104

for example, babies less than 5-minutes-old are drawn to faces. With gaze and head-turns, they follow face-like stimuli more than equally complex, nonface-like arrays; learning is not required (Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975). However, infants are also prepared to learn preferences for certain faces; these preferences emerge later. In the hours and days following birth, infants gaze longest at their mother’s face (Field, 2007), processing the gestalt of its particulars (Turati, Macchi Cassia, Simion, & Leo, 2006). As early as 48 hr, they suck hardest on an apparatus rigged with a nipple when sucking places their mother’s face in view instead of a stranger’s, thereby revealing a readily learned preference (Field, 2007). Visual learning is not required for infants to smile in response to a familiar voice or tickle; without the advantage of sight, the smiling of congenitally blind children is indistinguishable from that of sighted children (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1973). It is a neat, nonverbal package in the service of developing attachments; babies come prepared to scan faces, recognize and prefer particular ones, and smile when they do.

Involuntary to Voluntary Control A second, general theme in development is the tendency for behavior to shift from involuntary to voluntary control. The diminution of neonatal reflexes after the first month of life is a prime example. For example, reflexive sucking and palmer grasps become infant-directed and purposeful over the early weeks of development, no longer the automatic responses to stimulus events characteristic of earlier days. Similarly, newborn smiles or grimaces are often the result of random jostling of the nervous system or other endogenous events. This may be unwelcome news for parents who attribute their sleeping baby’s smile to sweet dreams; that dreamy look more likely indicates the passing of gas. Luckily—but more likely by an evolutionary design enabled by the development of the frontal cortex (Ruff & Rothbart, 1996)—smiling soon becomes voluntary and directed toward familiar social targets such as caregivers. By 3 or 4 months of age, infant provocateurs can induce parents to dance with lampshades on their heads if that is what it takes to elicit infant social smiles.

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Differentiation Third, like other human capacities, nonverbal communication is subject to differentiation. As for the development of neural circuits and sensorimotor behavior, responses become less diffuse, undifferentiated, and nonspecific and more distinctive, refined, organized, and directed with development. Though facial musculature is considerably differentiated at birth (Oster & Ekman, 1978), the ability to use it to express a range of discrete emotions seems less so. Age-related trends in the production and recognition of specific facial expressions of emotion reflect differentiation in developmental process. The degree to which differentiation is channeled by biological preparedness versus cultural forces is hotly debated, and arguments are often framed using divergent conceptualizations (e.g., Barrett, 2011; Camras & Shutter, 2010; Ekman, Levenson, & Friesen, 1983; Fridlund & Russell, 2006; Matsumoto, Olide, Schug, Willingham, & Callan, 2009; Oster, 2005; Panksepp, 2007; Scherer, Clark-Polner, & Mortillaro, 2011; Shariff & Tracy, 2011). The scientific debate is far from over. Meanwhile, in the “real” world, facial expressions present as amalgams of developmental constraints and opportunities. You could observe, as Lewis, Sullivan, and Vasen (1987) did, the attempts of toddlers, young children, and adults to pose six facial expressions of emotion (happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, disgust) in response to the request, “Can you make a ___ face?”. Lewis et al. videotaped their observations, compared them to objectively derived, muscle movement configurations, and scored them for correctness. The researchers found the expressions of 2-year-olds barely distinguishable; the upper regions of their faces were not expressive at all. Three-year-olds produced expressions of happiness and surprise best; 4- and 5-year-olds successfully portrayed a greater range of expressions, but their attempts were often partial—the lower part of the face carried most of the expressive signal. Adult expressions were most differentiated; they conveyed nearly the full array of distinct emotions using both upper and lower regions of the face, the exceptions being fear and disgust (Lewis et al., 1987). Leaving aside the exceptions for the moment, it took until adulthood for the

other four, nonrandom, biologically patterned facial movements to sync with cultural ideals of discrete, prototypical emotion labels and to make a match with theoretically objective facial measurements. Notably, it is unlikely anybody felt much of what they expressed in front of the camera. Nevertheless, in terms of communicating particular emotions via the face, the differentiation prize goes to the adults.

The Developmental Niche In combination and coordination, these three, ontogenetic forces—preparedness, increasing voluntary control, and differentiation—are augmented, synergized, or checked by the evocative powers of the niche. Super and Harkness (1986, 2002) conceptualized the developmental niche as a set of dynamic properties and forces that create unique environments for a child that the child, in turn, impacts. These include the physical and social settings, customs and practices of child rearing, the psychology of caretakers, characteristics of the child (e.g., sex, temperament), and local meaning systems. Thus, the dynamic niche shapes individual expressive capacities and performance and is, in turn, shaped by them. Consider some examples of the niche’s ability to bend and sway the development of nonverbal communication. Zinacanteco neonates enter the world in a smoke-filled hut, their faces covered to restrict visual contact (Brazelton, 1972). In other cultures, life starts with expressions of pain as a result of inoculation, circumcision, or scarification. Cranky Hausa babies are immediately quieted at a mother’s breast; consequently, they survive draught conditions better than their less expressive cohorts. Soon after birth, traditional Baganda newborns begin formal training to encourage social smiling; these charming babies smile earlier than most (Kilbride & Kilbride, 1975). German mothers frequently interact face-to-face with their babies; Cameroonian Nso mothers rarely do. At 12 weeks of age, German infants smile more frequently and imitate their mother’s actions more than their Nso counterparts, perhaps as a consequence (Wörmann, Holodynski, Kärtner, & Keller, 2012). Once a year in Japan, babies endure the screams of men who mean to start them crying—part of a “sumo style” baby crying contest, in which the winners are the “healthy” ones who are first to cry (see 105

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Figure 5.1. In many cities in Japan, an annual baby cry contest is held in the style of a sumo wrestling contest. A referee shouts at the babies to make them cry. The baby who cries first is typically declared the winner. Photograph by The Asahi Shinbun Collection/Getty Images. Reprinted with permission.

Figure 5.1). These are just early examples; the ebb and flow of nonverbal communication ride the tides of the niche throughout development. DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS IN NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION ENABLED BY THE MODALITIES OF TOUCH, OLFACTION, AND VISION Touch, olfaction, and vision are powerful channels through which social information is conveyed (see also Chapters 13, 14, and 15, this handbook). The modalities humans rely on to support nonverbal interchange likely follow a developmental time course rooted in cross-species patterns. Schneider, Call, and Liebal (2012) observed the early tactile and visual expressive behaviors of four types of apes over the first 20 months of life. They recorded the onset of expressive behaviors, which modalities were used and how often, and the context in which they were deployed. All four species relied on tactile and visual signals. The young of species most closely related to humans—bonobos, 106

chimpanzees, and gorillas—revealed a different pattern when compared with orangutans, a more distantly related species. Infant orangutans took longer to develop gestural communication and signaled predominantly about food. In African apes, tactile signals decreased over time, whereas visual signaling increased, thereby facilitating greater mobility and independence (Schneider et al., 2012). Surprisingly, there are few human studies comparable to this one, where multiple modalities are followed across time and life histories with the goal of revealing underlying processes and functions. Thus, we do not yet have a truly comprehensive view of nonverbal communication development. Researchers tend to specialize in studying one signal channel or another, rarely examining the interplay among modalities in shaping meaning (for exceptions, see Colonnesi, Zijlstra, van der Zande, & Bögels, 2012; Zhou & Chen, 2009b). Though sequence and characteristics of movement are essential to developing nonverbal meaning, the kinds of signals captured for laboratory study are too often static, taxodermic renditions—well controlled but

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of questionable validity. Developmental studies of human infant communication generally focus on gesture in the context of language’s beginnings rather than shifts among nonverbal modalities (e.g., Suanda & Namy, 2013). Children’s nonverbal behavior is often used only as a convenient indicator of social status or emotionality (popularity, prosociality, dominance, mind-reading, emotion regulation); it is less often studied as a developing social communication competence or skill set in and of itself. Instead, researchers from different perspectives have peeled off distinct layers from the nonverbal communication competence whole. Some investigate links between nonverbal communication skill and social dominance via ethological traditions (e.g., Blurton Jones, 1971; Brannigan & Humphries, 1972; Keating & Heltman, 1994). Others emphasize the self-regulatory (self-communicative) functions of nonverbal competencies (e.g., Saarni & Weber, 1999) or the application of nonverbal communication skills in therapeutic contexts and/or in special populations. This leaves an admittedly piecemeal account of what should be a developmental whole. What do researchers know about the basic unfolding of the nonverbal channels through which critical aspects of human communication occur? Research on communication via touch, olfaction, and vision is reviewed here in sequence, though these modalities typically operate in concert. Communication reliant on vision—facial and body expressions—receives most of the attention, as it does in the empirical literature (see Chapters 10, 12, and 15, this handbook). My focus is on how each mode of communication serves the development of social bonds.

Communication Through Touch There is touch—skin contact—and then there is communication through touch—sensory information produced in response to skin contact. The two are not the same. What registers in the sensory system and beyond shapes the signals sent via touch (see Hertenstein & Weiss, 2011), and they are highly consequential. Touch and early attachment. Sensitivity to touch is evident in the intrauterine environment, and it is exquisitely developed by birth in most mammals (Field, 2007; Montagu, 1971). Life depends

on it; the rooting reflex, whereby newborns orient toward stimulation around the mouth, guides neonates toward nourishment. Maturation is spurred by touch as well; Baganda babies’ twice-daily, herbal massage is believed partially responsible for their precocious, sensorimotor development (Kilbride & Kilbride, 1975). In decades past, immediate, continuous skin-to-skin contact between mother and neonate was believed to be the essential experience for healthy, emotional attachments to form, though presently, researchers are not so sure (Hertenstein, Verkamp, Kerestes, & Holmes, 2006). Nevertheless, skin-to-skin contact immediately after delivery has been associated with better breastfeeding practices and its concomitant, positive health and social- emotional outcomes (Field, 2007). Contact comfort. The kind of communication that touch enables is deeply embedded in phylogeny. Young mammals biological functioning depends on tactile contact with their warm, furry mothers and littermates; processes as basic as thermoregulation may be at the root of mammalian attachment systems (E. E. Nelson & Panksepp, 1998). In studies with infant monkeys, Harlow (1959) showed that absent of a real mother, infant monkeys experienced socalled contact comfort, or a feeling of security, when permitted to cling to inanimate, soft, terry-cloth surrogates. The tactile seductiveness of soft things is evident in human children’s preferences for attachment objects that are soft (e.g., blankets, stuffed animals) and in sales of the “boyfriend pillow,” a shirted, torsoshaped pillow with an “arm” to snuggle up against. Kangaroo care. Greater understanding of the value of touch led development experts in Western countries to encourage kangaroo care, a practice whereby newborns are held and carried on the chests of caregivers in a cloth pack, much the way traditional societies use slings. Among the developmental benefits of kangaroo care are enhanced communication outcomes for parents and babies. In one study, the interactions between mothers and infants were observed at 37 weeks. Those assigned to the kangaroo care group touched their infants more and showed more positive emotion than those assigned to traditional care. Kangaroo care infants were also more alert and gazed more at their mother’s face. By 3 months, both kangaroo care mothers and fathers 107

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were more sensitive to infants compared to traditional care parents (Feldman, Eidelman, Sirota, & Weller, 2002). Touch is a powerful ally of early bonds. Touch and relationships. The psychological benefits of touch in early development and later in life are impressive (for reviews, see Feldman, 2011, 2012; Stack & Jean, 2011). At any age, touch by a trusted agent has almost magical effects on the body, calling forth neural responses that gate-away pain or beat it to its target (in the brain) and rallying hormonal reinforcements that modulate cortisol levels and stress (Field, 2007). Most toddlers in distress seek body contact with caregivers and are comforted by it; most children and adults deploy hugs, strokes, and pats to comfort others. Nonhuman primates reveal similar patterns (see Hertenstein et al., 2006, for a review). In fact, Dunbar (2010) views nonhuman primate social grooming as the evolutionary foundation for the effects of human touch on human social bonds. The comforting effects of touch have proven value in many contexts across the human life span, from comforting infants during painful medical procedures (e.g., Feldman, Singer, & Zagoory, 2010), to the benefits of massage for women in labor as well as for their newborns (Field, 2007), to enhancing the attentiveness of autistic children (Field, 2011), to quieting the nerves of individuals deciding whether to take a financial risk (Levav & Argo, 2010). Touch conveys information about the me, the not-me, and about relationships between the two. Based on observations of touch between U.S. mothers and infants, Ferber, Feldman, and Makhoul (2008) categorized nine specific behaviors into three basic touch categories: affectionate, stimulating, and instrumental. The high rates of affectionate and stimulating touch found during the first 6 months of life diminished during the second, as reciprocal forms of touch increased. Learning what it means to touch and be touched affords the opportunity to be agent as well as target in a relationship. For example, tickling is a lot about relationships; it is nearly impossible to tickle yourself. It is a form of touch communication common to humans cross-culturally, to nonhuman primates, and to other species; even rats enjoy a good tickle once in 108

a while (Burgdorf & Panksepp, 2001; Hertenstein et al., 2006). Tickling shares with play its provocative nature, inviting interaction with a degree of unpredictability. Thus, the earliest facial responses to tickling signal surprise as well as joy (Bennett, Bendersky, & Lewis, 2005). Provine (2004) argued that human tickling, as an essentially social endeavor, serves to express the special bond that develops between the (vulnerable) tickled and a trusted, tickling agent (family member, friend, lover). Babies are tickled worldwide as a form of play and a sign of affection. Tickling between family members and friends is common during infancy and childhood. By adolescence, Provine reported that tickling bouts between othersex individuals are seven times more likely than same-sex tickling bouts. Tickling continues to be a communication tactic inviting relationships, play, and signaling affection throughout adulthood, though at about 40 years of age, the self-reported frequency of tickling bouts declines dramatically. Tickling generally stimulates laughter and smiling (Provine, 2004), the forms of which do not necessarily signal purely positive affect. Reponses to tickling share elements of pain as well as pleasure (Harris & Alvarado, 2005) and may reflect as much about the relationship between tickled and tickler as about emotion per se. Niche aspects of touch in relationships. In many societies, lots of tactile contact between young offspring and parents is the norm and for a reason. Among traditional hunters and gatherers, contact is facilitated by co-sleeping, breastfeeding, late weaning, lengthy birth spacing, and other practices shaped by life histories (Konner, 2010). These practices reinforce familial bonds and collective identities, key elements of the developmental niche of many traditional societies. Modern, cultural practices dramatically diminished body contact. Daytime observations of middleclass families in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1960s and 1970s revealed that infants were held by parents approximately 5% of the time; during the other 95% of the time, infants were “held” by cribs, playpens, swings, or other such devices. These practices likely reinforce notions of independent self-construals. In Congo, Aka infants are held by an adult nearly

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all of their waking hours (Konner, 2010) as part of a lifestyle compatible with interdependent self-construals. Nonverbal communication habits are shaped by and shape the niche. Studies of Palestinian and Israeli parents and their 5-month-old infants revealed that Palestinian parents maintained constant physical contact with offspring (and with one another) but initiated little directed touching or mutual gaze; Israeli parents displayed the reverse pattern (Feldman, Masalha, & Alony, 2006; Feldman, Masalha, & Nadam, 2001). Palestinian babies also maintained greater levels of calm, their moods less labile than Israeli infants. These divergent habits of touch communication likely impact developing self-construals, as one embedded and interdependent in harmonious relationships with others (characteristic of traditional Palestinian society) or as one whose autonomy and independence from others requires effort to ensure social coordination (characteristic of Israeli society; Feldman, 2011). Touch tunes the self to others in these ways and, in turn, shapes societies. Touch and social influence. Like other forms of nonverbal communication, touch is also a tool for social influence and manipulation. Infants and toddlers are fully capable of manipulating caregivers and others using touch. Nonnutritive sucking at mother’s breast, clinging, pulling, patting, poking, and guiding are used by the very young to capture and direct the attention of others. Touch delivers messages a preverbal child finds useful during conflict (Ingram, 2014); a hit, kick, shove, hair pull, or bite conveys “No,” or “I want that,” or “It’s mine,” or “I’m not going,” or “I don’t like you right now,” or “Go away,” or all of the above. Though undifferentiated in form and meaning, these tactile signals stand a chance of achieving objectives by expressing immediate wants and desires, the infant’s opening hand. More subtle forms of touch as a means of gaining advantage and compliance have been pretty well studied in adults in the West (see Knapp, Hall, & Horgan, 2014, for a comprehensive summary), but comparable research on children, adolescents in the West, or adults from other cultures is lacking. The meaning of touch depends on who does it, how, and in what context. Social expectations for

relationships between individuals belonging to different genders and stations in life shape the messages of touch (J. A. Hall, 2011). Other things being equal, individuals who initiate touch are typically perceived as having higher status than those they touch (J. A. Hall, Coats, & LeBeau, 2005). Touch can signal various degrees of liking and intimacy in adult relationships. Touching and being touched within relationships feels good (has hedonic value) and signals the quality of the social bond (Hertenstein, 2011). For example, National Basketball Association players who touched one another frequently during early season games improved most in terms of individual and team performance over the season; touching reflected increased cooperative play (Kraus, Huang, & Keltner, 2010). Touch and the communication of affect. Touch transmits a slew of negative and positive feelings (Hertenstein et al., 2006). Negative tactile stimulation from mothers instructed to apply pressure to their infant’s back signaled caution, slowing infant exploration of objects (Hertenstein & Campos, 2001). Rough touch by mothers, recorded as they fed their 3-month-olds, predicted infant behavioral problems at 2 years of age (Weiss, Wilson, Seed, & Paul, 2001). On the positive side, warm, body contact coded from family photographs predicted their kindergartener’s smile intensity in class photographs; these “thin slices” were suggestive of overall family and child affective style (Oveis, Gruber, Keltner, Stamper, & Boyce, 2009). Touch directed to the self or self-touch has important affect-related, communicative consequences for those who observe it. Repetitive selftouching (self-manipulation) is associated with anxiety-provoking situations in nonhuman primates (Aureli & Whiten, 2003) and humans (Ekman & Friesen, 1974; Montagu, 1971). It is also believed to be self-protective (as when hands cover eyes, blocking off visual information) and expressive of the degree to which engagement during interaction with others is perceived as desirable (e.g., defensively crossed arms or legs; Ekman & Friesen, 1969; cf. Meadors & Murray, 2014). Situations in which adults feel cognitively taxed can elicit self-touch (Egloff & Schmukle, 2002). 109

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These include social situations to which young children may be exposed. At least as early as 1 year of age, babies tune in to the nonverbal exchanges of the adults in their world (Gräfenhain, Behne, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). Thus, observant offspring are likely to perceive the emotional tone of how adults feel about a social interaction by monitoring the messages that self-touch transmits (Castelli, De Dea, & Nesdale, 2008; Castelli, Zogmaister, & Tomelleri, 2009). In this way, infants and young children may absorb the social biases transmitted by adult nonverbal behavior without a mean word spoken. Touch signals more than general emotional tone; touch conveys discrete, differentiated emotions. Discrete emotions are thought to be basic, universal, neuro-affect programs that sync particular human feelings to expression (Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971; Tomkins, 1962). Hertenstein, Holmes, McCullough, and Keltner (2009) blindfolded one member of an unacquainted, undergraduate dyad. The other dyad member touched the blindfolded person “appropriately” to convey different emotions. Each blindfolded participant selected the meaning of each touch from a list of nine options; of these, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy were correctly identified at rates greater than expected, or roughly 50%–70% of the time. Different kinds of touch were associated with different emotions; for example, sympathy was communicated by patting and rubbing, and fear was communicated by squeezing (Hertenstein et al., 2009). The data record from other age groups is insufficient at the time of this writing to understand how the differentiation of emotional touch unfolds. Summary of developmental trends in communication through touch. The development of communication via touch can be described in terms of the three basic, ontogenetic patterns identified earlier: preparedness, increasing voluntary control, and differentiation. Typical human neonates are naturally drawn to soft, tactile stimuli and are psychologically as well as physically comforted by it. Early, reflexive responses to touch, such as rooting and grasping, are replaced by self-guided forms used to communicate with others and to manipulate them. Meanings 110

of touch and of being touched become differentiated with development. What is communicated through a singular touch can be pegged to a discrete emotion label by adulthood. Even before that, the meaning tone of touch comes to depend on who is doing the touching and in what context. The most extraordinary feature of touch as a communication channel is how its physiological functions have such powerful psychological effects. Whereas early appetites for touch keep vulnerable infants physically close to their protectors, what develops in parallel is a sense of self and other. In these ways, communication through touch supports social aspects of the niche, and vice versa.

Communication Through Olfaction Olfaction, a phylogenetically ancient sense older even than touch, comprises a range of chemosignals that organize the experience of taste, but more importantly for social bonds, provides a nonverbal channel for crucial information about the identity and state of conspecifics. Chemosignals support early attachments and later relationships, and they guide everyday interpersonal interactions. Similar to other forms of nonverbal communication, olfactory signals operate at both conscious and unconscious levels of awareness, meaning that their power to influence human social bonds is likely underappreciated. Olfaction and early attachment. The mammalian olfactory sense is operational in the fetus and at birth, providing a critical chemosensory communication channel that not only encourages feeding but also enables individual recognition, a key component of developing attachments. Humans are no exception; human neonates are biologically prepared to use olfactory cues to guide them toward their mother’s body and breast. Both hardwired and experiential perceptual systems seem to be involved (Schaal et al., 2009). Experiments with newborns reveal that they orient toward their mother’s amniotic fluid and that they distinguish and prefer the odor of their mother’s milk over that of a stranger’s (Field, 2007). Mothers, too, use this powerful nonverbal channel. New mothers can distinguish their individual newborn’s odors from those of other infants using scents

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detected on their baby’s breath and from traces of body odors transmitted to clothing and blankets (Porter, Cernoch, & McLaughlin, 1983). These patterns reinforce the view that olfaction conveys crucial information between offspring and mother early in life (Cheal, 1975; Stevenson, 2010). Olfaction and relationships. Olfaction’s role in individual identification supports social bonds later in life. When 5- to 8-year-olds sniffed the tee-shirts of young children, they distinguished the odors of their younger siblings from unfamiliar children at above chance rates (Porter & Moore, 1981). For the older siblings, the odiferous experience was not all that pleasant. The fact that family members do not smell good to one another has been proposed as an incest avoidance mechanism (Weisfeld, Czilli, Phillips, Gall, & Lichtman, 2003). Friends’ odors are distinctive too. Nine-yearolds can identify friends, and college students can identify their roommates from olfactory cues (e.g., Mallet & Schaal, 1998; Zhou & Chen, 2009b). Moreover, adult friends perceive smells more similarly than nonfriends; this may be associated with the overlapping genetics between them (Christakis & Fowler, 2014). One study found that adults prefer the body odors of adults who share their political beliefs; the researchers contend that such olfactory sensitivities may serve as a means by which to select a compatible mate (McDermott, Tingley, & Hatemi, 2014). Cross-species relationships are also supported by chemosignals. Owners of “man’s best friend” can attest to the importance dogs place on olfactory cues for identification. It turns out that owners themselves can discriminate the odor of their pet dog from that of other dogs (Wells & Hepper, 2000). Similar to other species, humans sense the state of conspecifics through olfaction, though we may not be aware of the cues that attract or repel us (Li, Moallem, Paller, & Gottfried, 2007). Nonetheless, these cues have measurable effects in intimate ways. It took a while before science was ready to take on this aspect of our animal nature. For example, the involvement of olfactory signals in human reproduction was tentatively introduced by Rogel (1978). At that time, research appeared suggesting that

olfactory cues provided a mechanism by which menstrual synchrony occurred; later accounts confirmed it (K. Stern & McClintock, 1998). As for other species, it turns out that olfactory cues serve as attractants in human mating (e.g., Gildersleeve, Haselton, Larson, & Pillsworth, 2012; Rantala, Eriksson, Vainikka, & Kortet, 2006). Olfaction and the communication of affect. Olfaction also conveys information about emotional condition. Individuals excrete chemosensory “alarm” signals through sweat glands; others detect their signal and can identify the state of fear. The smell of fear has as powerful an effect on eliciting fearful facial expressions as does audiovisual fear cues (de Groot, Semin, & Smeets, 2014). In combination with visual cues from faces, ambiguous facial expressions can be made to look more fearful when chemosensory fear cues are simultaneously presented (Zhou & Chen, 2009a). When facial expressions mask true feelings, olfactory cues may have increased value, at least when negative states are aroused. However, some might be better than others at detecting such cues. Zhou and Chen (2009b) found commonalities between olfactory and visual nonverbal sensitivities. Women who were most accurate in identifying their roommate’s body odor from tee-shirts also displayed superior performance in identifying basic facial expressions of emotion (Zhou & Chen, 2009b). This synthetic work suggests individual differences in generalized, nonverbal cue vigilance. However, what exactly is communicated? Olfaction has been called a sensory emotion in that it elicits mood and emotion (Yeshurun & Sobel, 2010). Olfaction shares with emotion neural substrates that project to areas in the brain associated with emotion (LeDoux, 2007; Zhou & Chen, 2009b); a hedonic, experiential dimension (pleasant/unpleasant); privileged connections to memory (Yeshurun & Sobel, 2010; Zhou & Chen, 2009a); and a female sensitivity advantage (Brand & Millot, 2001; Olsson, Barnard, & Turri, 2006). De Groot, Smeets, Kaldewaij, Duijndam, and Semin (2012) have demonstrated that specific facial and other behavioral responses occur in response to fear and disgust-related chemosignals, respectively. Is there 111

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a differentiated, chemosensory system for discrete emotions? In their review of olfaction, Yeshurun and Sobel (2010) wrote that “Humans are astonishingly good at odor detection and discrimination” (p. 223) and concluded that “Humans are astonishingly bad at odor identification and naming” (p. 226). These experts presented evidence supporting each view—that humans are highly sensitive to tiny amounts of odors and distinguish among them quite well but cannot name them. Odors do not easily sort themselves into neat, discrete, verbally accessible categories. Making it easy by providing limited choices of “basic” emotion labels helps. Using this research strategy, adults linked specific odors to happiness, disgust, and anxiety (Croy, Olgun, & Joraschky, 2011). Using less constrained methodologies, however, most studies demonstrate very limited, differentiated responding; perceivers generally agree on what constitutes good and bad smells, and this hedonic continuum describes most human reactions to odors (Yeshurun & Sobel, 2010). Summary of developmental trends in communication through olfaction. Olfaction plays more than a supporting role in the performance of human nonverbal communication. Developmentally, the functions and effects of chemosensory cues parallel those described for touch. Neonates come into the world prepared to identify, remember, and prefer odors linked to familiar caregivers. At the same time, the odor cues released by offspring, relatives, friends, and lovers confirm identities and signal states. Voluntary control over body odor signals is increasingly practiced at later ages, its particulars shaped by the niche. Reactions to odor cues become differentiated by social context and relationships. Olfactory cues have hedonic value and, under certain protocols, may elicit more discrete emotions in adults.

Communication Through Vision: Developmental Trends in Facial Expressions Humans are social animals and visual ones. It is to this sense that communication via the human face owes its prominence. The structure and wiring of faces evolved in part because their signal value 112

conferred fitness benefits (Keating, 2002). Humans adapted to group living by becoming intuitive face perceivers, detecting and expressing meaning through dynamic expressions and static, physiognomic traits. Here, I focus this developmental review on dynamic facial signaling systems. The dynamism of the face is a crucial communication tool. Emotional expressions, facial signals and gestures, and the artful use of gaze to “connect” with others and to direct others’ attention in both subtle or dramatic ways are hallmarks of this communication mode. It is rare when a person’s face is not signaling something. Infants “know” this; one event that upsets them mightily is when their mother poses an expressionless face that moves not at all. Thus, the so-called still-face paradigm is deployed by researchers to alter infant social/ emotional state (e.g., Mesman, Linting, Joosen, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van Ijzendoorn, 2013). Seeking and expressing information via the face comes naturally to babies and expands during development, thanks to the navigational forces of biological preparedness, increasing voluntary control, differentiation, and the niche. Sensation and facial expression. Sensation opens the floodgates of facial expression early in life. The faces of young infants are biologically prepared to move in response to sensory events—specifically, to sudden, unexpected events; to pain; to taste; and to meeting the gaze of others. The startle facial expression. The startle expression is a prime example of preparedness, with its highly fixed onset and offset, exceptionally short duration, and resistance to voluntary control even when anticipated (Ekman, Friesen, & Simons, 1985). It has a choreographed pattern of facial muscle movements, raising the brows (presumably for better scanning), increasing blink rate, and pulling the mouth sideways. Startle expressions in babies, children, and adults share components and are similarly triggered by sudden, unexpected, sensory events (e.g., loud noises, unexpected sightings). The startle is morphologically distinct from the prototypical emotional display of surprise according to Ekman and his colleagues, who consider the startle facial response to be part of the startle reflex

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in humans with little signal value (see, e.g., Ekman et al., 1985). More could be done to probe this point of view. In real-world situations, how do individuals respond to others’ startles—or do they not respond? Facial expressions of pain. Expressions of pain have obvious, communicative consequences, especially for assessing the condition of those whose language may not be up to the task of capturing internal experience. Researchers conducted a shortterm, longitudinal study of infant pain expressions by videotaping infant facial responses during their 2-, 4-, 6-, and 12-month immunizations (inoculations by injection; Kohut, Riddell, Flora, & Oster, 2012). Expressions were coded for particular facial movements using an infant version of the Facial Action Coding System (Baby FACS; Oster, 2006). Components of adult pain expressions flashed across infant faces in the brief instant following needle insertion. However, infants did not express the kind of discrete, negative emotional signals characteristic of adults. Instead, they signaled general distress and discomfort with their faces (Kohut et al., 2012). In contrast, when Prkachin and colleagues applied different coding schemes (Neonatal Facial Coding System and Child Facial Coding System; see, e.g., Prkachin, 2009), they were able to identify facial action units specifically associated with genuine pain in neonates, children, younger adults, and the elderly, including those with dementia. To Prkachin and colleagues, these facial pain responses seemed developmentally continuous (see Prkachin, 2009). Measurement differences aside, there is more to understand about the capacity of the face to express pain, and its role in social relationships. Although mothers—and for that matter, pediatricians—readily detect general pain signals, they struggle to conjure the specific nature of the pain. Adult judgments of pain intensity from facial expression are quite variable. Moreover, with increasing ability to voluntarily control facial output, even pain expressions may be faked. Perceivers have a hard time distinguishing real from fake pain expressions. Computers do it better; software “trained” to identify facial action units (muscle contractions) associated with real pain proved more reliable than human observers in discerning genuine from feigned pain (Bartlett, Littlewort, Frank, & Lee, 2014). Maybe that is

because the human eye is used to searching not only for signs of real pain but for expressions that also comprise bids for sympathy and support—also important (social) calls to answer. Moreover, pure expressions of actual pain may be in short supply in human circles, as is the case for other species. Cloaking the full-blown extent and source of pain and injury may disguise serious defects in newborns dependent on parental investment and may preserve self-presentational goals in vulnerable adults (Keating, 2006). Facial expressions in reaction to taste. Expressions triggered by sensations of taste also register with observers in rather nonspecific ways. Babies’ reactions to sweet, sour, and bitter tastes produce facial expressions similar to those of adults (Ganchrow, Steiner, & Daher, 1983). Sweet flavors elicit smiles, lips pucker in response to bitterness, and noses wrinkle when sour substances are tasted. Carefully controlled studies showed that although untrained, adult observers could detect from videotapes when an infant sampled sweet versus sour or bitter tastes, they could not distinguish facial reactions to sour versus bitter stimuli (Rosenstein & Oster, 1988). Yet, a fine-grained analysis using Baby FACS revealed distinctive facial muscle actions for these negative hedonic responses, despite variability in infant individual responses (Rosenstein & Oster, 1988). More recent research revealed that infant responses to sour taste become more differentiated between 4 and 12 months (Bennett et al., 2005). Yet, as for pain, adult perceivers seem sensitive to general, not specific, facial signals of distress in young infants (Oster, 2005); the question that remains is why. Responding to gaze. Mutual gaze is a distal, sensory event and an interesting example of how pervasive the influence of the niche can be on seemingly elemental nonverbal behaviors. From birth, infants reveal a preference for mutual compared to averted gaze (Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). However, there is a lot to getting this basic signal regulated “right” according to one’s culture. Infants do not quite get it. In the first few months of life, they exhibit captured attention, staring too long into your eyes as if they know something and await your confession. As caregivers tune infants to synchronous, social engagement (Feldman, 2007), 113

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infant fixations become less stuck on particulars of the face. Still, developmental studies of Swedish and Dutch infant and adult fixation patterns indicate that gaze avoidance, at least in response to threatening faces, is not observed in 7-month-old infants the way it is in adults, suggesting it may be learned later in the context of the niche (Hunnius, de Wit, Vrins, & von Hofsten, 2011; Rigato, Farroni, & Johnson, 2010). In some cultures, children learn that not meeting another’s gaze signals disinterest and disrespect (Argyle & Cook, 1976; E. T. Hall, 1966). In others, active gaze avoidance is a hallmark of respect for a higher status person (e.g., Schofield, Parke, Castañeda, & Coltrane, 2008). Children and adults (as well as nonhuman primates) use staring as a threat gesture (Fehr & Exline, 1987); done differently, mutual gaze signals attachment, connection, and—among adults in the West—romantic interest (Moore, 2010). Giving and getting accurate signals from gaze would seem to be important, and so it is puzzling how long a cultural “leash” humans seem to give it. Emotion communication from facial expression. Facial expressions are vehicles for emotion communication. In fact, for some post-Darwinian theorists, expression and emotion are one in the same. That is, the activation of neuromuscular activity on the face is as integral a part of an emotion as its internal feeling state, and its particular physiological and motivational signature (Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971; Tomkins, 1962). To these theorists, innate, evolved capacities comprise discrete, “basic” emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust, and (for some) contempt (Ekman & Heider, 1988). Izard (1971, 2007), whose differential emotions theory was based on extensive work with infants, included “interest” as a basic emotion. What makes particular emotions basic according to Izard (1992) is their “innate and unique neural, emotional, and motivational substrates, including innate and universal expressive components” (p. 561; see also Izard, 2007). Other emotions are blended from these. Facial expressions transmit to others but also to self via feedback from muscle to brain (Tomkins, 1962). Each basic emotion is believed to have a unique, autonomic response signature that appears 114

similar across the life span (Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen, & Ekman, 1991). Thus, the proposition that emotional expression and emotional experience are the conjoined twins of nonverbal behavior has important implications for the development of emotion regulation as well as for nonverbal communication (e.g., Campos, Frankel, & Camras, 2004; Holodynski, 2004; Saarni & Weber, 1999). Here, however, we stay focused on the interpersonal, communicative aspects of basic emotions theory. Theories promoting basic, discrete, universal emotions indexed by innate facial expression have stimulated decades of research on the expressive capacities and recognition abilities of infants, children, and adults. Importantly, these theories generate potentially falsifiable predictions as to what to expect from “top down” points of view. Toward that end, the emotional signaling and receiving capacities of infants and children can be compared to adultbased standards or prototypes. However, just as importantly, developmental approaches have generated critical questions in the pursuit of understanding emotion and its communicative functions. Are infant expressions associated with internal states such as those projected for adults? Do infant expressions comprise elements of the prototypical facial action units that eventually metamorphose into full-fledged, differentiated adult expressions? Can infants detect and discriminate different emotional expressions and the emotion states they convey? Are all emotional expressions “equal,” or do some attract more attention than others? To what degree does experience modify the course of biologically prepared, communicative signals? Do the abilities to express and recognize emotional facial expressions degrade over the life span? Finally, what of the development of expressions not presumed linked to emotion? Answers to these questions contribute valuable, “bottom-up” challenges to higher order assumptions of current models of emotion. Research to date indicates that, within the constraints of biological preparedness, emotion recognition and expression journey from a relatively diffuse system to one with greater refinement and specificity in both action and meaning, a developmental change generally characterized as differentiation.

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Recognizing and interpreting facial expressions of emotion. The detection and discrimination of emotionally valenced facial expressions begins strikingly early in life (see Leppänen & Nelson, 2006, for a review). Newborns are responsive to changes in facial expressions, and they mimic their configurations (Field, Woodson, Greenberg, & Cohen, 1982). Discrimination of posed expressions and static, facial expressions of happy, angry, fearful, sad, and surprised has been reported in 3- to 4-month-olds (LaBarbera, Izard, Vietze, & Parisi, 1976), with mothers facial poses being especially provocative (Barrera & Maurer, 1981). In these early months, infants are typically tuned to caregiver’s emotional expressivity; the familiar faces of their mothers (but not strangers) facilitate cross-modal matching of facial/vocal signs of emotion (happy/sad vs. happy/angry) and so do the faces of their fathers if they are frequent caregivers (Montague & Walker-Andrews, 2001; Walker-Andrews, Krogh-Jespersen, Mayhew, & Coffield, 2011). In this case, familiarity breeds not only liking but also a rudimentary understanding of positively and negatively valenced emotions. Interestingly, the reverse may also be true; 3-month-olds more readily learn a new face shown with a smile than shown with a neutral expression (Turati, Montirosso, Brenna, Ferrara, & Borgatti, 2011). Clearly, facial behavior has meaning remarkably early in life. Generalized recognition of emotional expressions. Between 5 and 7 months of age, infants generalize emotional expression discrimination across dynamic and static expressions of unfamiliar individuals (Bornstein & Arterberry, 2003; Caron, Caron, & Myers, 1985; C. A. Nelson & Dolgin, 1985; Soken & Pick, 1999). Leppänen and Nelson (2009, 2012) proposed that by this time in development, exposure to positive and negative facial expressions enlists the perceptual processes needed to shape cognitions about emotion categories and consequences. Evidence from event-related potential (ERP) work suggests that emotion categories for happy versus sad expressions are formed by 7 months of age (Leppänen, Richmond, Vogel-Farley, Moulson, & Nelson, 2009). Hemodynamic (blood

flow) patterns also differ in response to happy and angry facial expressions at about this age (Nakato, Otsuka, Kanazawa, Yamaguchi, & Kakigi, 2011). ERP evidence of discrimination between two negative expressions, fear and anger, has also been reported in 7-month-olds (Kobiella, Grossmann, Reid, & Striano, 2008). As infant social worlds expand, so do their capabilities to decipher facial expressions needed to expand their repertoire of social targets. Differentiation in responses to emotional facial expressions. Very young infants respond differently (and appropriately) to facial expressions of affect, suggesting that they connect expression to general emotional tone. Observation of “en face” interactions between mothers and infants is a window to the synchrony of emotional tone that develops by 10 weeks of age (Haviland & Lelwica, 1987). With time and a niche favoring maternal expressivity (Bornstein, Arterberry, Mash, & Manian, 2011; Field, 2007), 7-month-old infants recognize and interpret positively and negatively valenced emotionally expressive signals across familiar and unfamiliar faces, using facial cues to anticipate what will happen next (Walker-Andrews, 1997). One longitudinal study found that between 6 and 36 months, children increasingly initiate gazing at their mother’s faces whereas, the reverse is true of mothers (Farran & Kasari, 1990). These developments enable young infants to employ faces as social referencing tools (McClure, 2000). Thus, infants are able to use their mother’s facial expressions to interpret their world. Classic studies of the visual cliff demonstrated the effectiveness of maternal expressions to encourage or discourage exploration of the ambiguous appearance of a dangerous-looking “drop” (Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985). Others have shown that positive, maternal facial expressions cue infant play and exploration, whereas posed sadness shuts it down (Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989). During immunizations, infants whose mothers displayed fear instead of pain in anticipation of the procedure displayed less pain after needle insertion (Horton & Riddell, 2010). These nonverbal sensitivities eventually extend to others’ facial expressions. By 7 months 115

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of age, infants look to stranger’s facial expressions to check on apparent ambiguities in intentions toward them (Striano & Vaish, 2006). Changing attunements to facial expressions of emotion. Attunements to different emotional expressions change over time. A host of different methodologies measuring looking time, ERPs, heart rate, and shifts in attention suggest that during the first few months of life, infants seem drawn to positive expressions (e.g., Farroni, Menon, Rigato, & Johnson, 2007; LaBarbera et al., 1976; Vaish, Grossmann, & Woodworth, 2008) but become tuned to fear expressions by the second half of the first year of life (e.g., Hoehl & Striano, 2010; Leppänen & Nelson, 2009; Vaish et al., 2008). For example, using the overlap procedure and measuring scan paths, 5-month-old infants readily disengaged their attention away from fearful facial expression; by 7 months of age, they were reluctant to do so (Peltola, Hietanen, Forssman, & Leppänen, 2013). Similarly, ERP studies indicated that whereas sensitivity to happy faces characterized 7-month-olds, 12-month-olds displayed a more adult-like sensitivity to angry faces (Grossmann, Striano, & Friederici, 2007; Vaish et al., 2008). Moreover, infants, like adults, scan threatening (angry and fearful) and nonthreatening (happy, sad, neutral) facial expressions differently, revealing fewer, shorter fixations on the inner features of threatening faces, a pattern described as vigilent (Hunnius et al., 2011). Young children are also on alert for bad news. Like adults, they detect angry faces embedded in neutral distractors more quickly than happy ones (LoBue, Matthews, Harvey, & Thrasher, 2014). The timing of the shift toward sensitivity to fear cues syncs with dangers inherent in increased mobility and with an increase in a parent’s use of distal strategies (i.e., facial expressions) to influence infant behavior (Braungart-Rieker, Hill-Soderlund, & Karrass, 2010; Campos, Kermoian, & Zumbahlen, 1992; Leppänen & Nelson, 2009; Peltola et al., 2013). Niche elements in emotion recognition from faces. While infants begin to find similarities in expressive features across individual faces, their mothers start making distinctions, conforming to the cross-species pattern of specializing in their 116

offsprings’ social-emotional signals. In adults generally, approach and avoidance tendencies are guided by expressions. Expressions of happiness and sadness in infants (or in adults) stimulate motoric approach tendencies, indicating a readiness to socially engage or help (Mizokawa, Minemoto, Komiya, & Noguchi, 2013). Mothers’ brains, however, are uniquely sensitive to their own baby’s smiles and cries (Doi & Shinohara, 2012). Mothers may put a familial stamp on their children’s early expression recognition abilities as well. After all, mothers tailor their facial communication like they do features of language, performing certain facial actions in a slow, exaggerated fashion (D. N. Stern, 1974). Chong, Werker, Russell, and Carroll (2003) identified three expressions commonly used by Canadian Chinese and English-speaking mothers when interacting with their infants in naturalistic settings—the fish face; mock surprise; and an infant-directed, exaggerated smile. Exaggerated, feigned-emotion-laden expressions such as these are attention-grabbing, making infant imitative actions (and therefore social learning) more likely (Fukuyama & Myowa-Yamakoshi, 2013). At this point in development, caregivers likely fine-tune recognition patterns as they do expressive productions (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2003). The developing infant acts on the niche to shape what becomes meaningful in a face. Infant scan paths in response to dynamic, talking faces reveal that whereas 3- to 4-month-olds attend equally to mouth and eyes, 9-month-olds fixate mostly on the moving mouth, likely reflecting rudiments of the preparedness to learn language (Wilcox, Stubbs, Wheeler, & Alexander, 2013). The work of the niche in shaping facial emotion recognition becomes increasingly apparent as children age. Some researchers suggest that even the perceptual structure of facial emotional expressions takes shape over time (Gao, Maurer, & Nishimura, 2010). Others target cognitive processes. Widen and Russell (2010) found that as language skills develop, young U.S. children (3–10 years of age) more readily differentiate (label) basic emotions from emotion stories than from still, photographic images of facial expressions depicting basic, prototypical emotions.

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With the exception of surprise, even the youngest children were more accurate when identifying prototypical emotions and social emotions from stories than from faces. This suggests the inculcation of a conceptual emotion map partially fitted to expressions rather than the other way around. In fact, adult interpretations of facial expressions reveal “wiggle room” in the degree to which specific emotional expressions are exclusively pinned to single emotion labels (Widen & Naab, 2012). Given a free response paradigm, even adults have trouble coming up with the predicted labels for some basic emotional expressions (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002). Emotion recognition signals are also warped by gender role expectations. When infants are believed to be boys, their facial expressions are more likely to be perceived by adults as expressing fear, anger, and distress. When believed to be girls, infants are perceived as expressing more joy (Haviland, 1977). Similarly, adult perceivers are more sensitive to expressions of anger in male faces and happiness in female faces for social (as well as physiognomic) reasons (Becker, Kenrick, Neuberg, Blackwell, & Smith, 2007). Thus, basic emotion signals are compromised by cues associated with gender. Sex differences in emotion recognition. Gender and emotion recognition are linked in other ways. A female advantage in recognizing emotion persists across the life span. During infancy, childhood, and adulthood, meta-analytic results confirm that females are more sensitive to expressions of emotions than are males (J. A. Hall, 1984, 2006; McClure, 2000). A study of 1,951 European 13- to 15-year-olds presented morphed faces expressing blended emotions along four continua: anger/ sadness, anger/fear, happiness/fear, and happiness/ sadness (Lee et al., 2013). Accuracy and reaction time to choose one of two labels (the end points of each continuum) were recorded. Adolescent girls displayed greater sensitivity to expressions; they were more accurate and faster at choosing predominant emotions represented in the blends. Though both sexes overidentified happiness, boys did so more. Pubertal status had no predictive value for either sex (Lee et al., 2013). Thus, past and present research throws the weight of the evidence in the direction of greater female sensitivity to emotional facial expressions.

Several mechanisms have been proposed to account for the sex difference, including the way women and men look at and scan faces (e.g., J. K. Hall, Hutton, & Morgan, 2010). Females generally gaze more frequently and longer at faces than do males (J. A. Hall, 1984), even as infants (Leeb & Rejskind, 2004). At 3–4 and 9–10 months of age, as well as during adulthood, females’ fixations target internal compared to external facial features more than do males, potentially leaving females more sensitive to facial changes in expression (Rennels & Cummings, 2013). Why do females and males scan faces differently? The universal emphasis on nurturance training for girls (Barry, Josephson, Lauer, & Marshall, 1976) may put a premium on their ability to detect signs of distress and delight in faces. Some neuroscientists suggest that this ability is acquired at a very primary, automatic level in females (G. B. C. Hall, Witelson, Szechtman, & Nahmias, 2004). Others researchers argue that higher order, social norms and expectations drive females’ modest advantage on most tests of nonverbal sensitivity (J. A. Hall, 2006). Developmental work on how family contexts encourage and discourage expressivity in girls and boys could be revealing (e.g., Halberstadt, Crisp, & Eaton, 1999). For example, in 1989, more nonverbal expressivity was observed during discussions between daughters and parents than between sons and parents (Noller & Callan, 1989). Is this still the case, where are the exceptions, and what are the consequences for social relationships? Recognizing facial expressions of emotion later in life. There are some curious twists and turns in the developmental research record of emotion recognition capacities from school-age children through adulthood. In general, studies of emotion recognition, whereby various sets of prototypical emotional expressions or morphed emotion-blends are matched to emotion labels, reveal increased accuracy and sensitivity up through late childhood (e.g., Herba, Landau, Russell, Ecker, & Phillips, 2006; Montirosso, Peverelli, Frigerio, Crespi, & Borgatti, 2010; K. M. Thomas et al., 2001; L. A. Thomas, De Bellis, Graham, & LaBar, 2007). Theorists have tried to tag this expanding skill set to maturation in the brain’s emotion processing circuitry during 117

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adolescence. However, complicating the issue is the fact that trends in recognition performance differ for different emotions. Some find increased sensitivity to happy and fearful expressions between 4 and 15 years of age but no change for sadness, anger, or disgust (Herba et al., 2006). Others report children and adolescents to be less sensitive to fear and anger than adults (L. A. Thomas et al., 2007). There are also reports of improvement in the recognition of particular emotions for males only during adolescence (Biele & Grabowska, 2006; Mancini, Agnoli, Baldaro, Ricci Bitti, & Surcinelli, 2013). At present, these odd blips on the emotion recognition radar screen have no compelling explanation. Some inconsistencies in emotion recognition abilities correspond to tragedies that befall children and come to characterize their niche. Children with histories of abuse show abnormalities in their responses to emotional displays by peers (e.g., Main & George, 1985). There are other, cruel ways in which the niche surrounding an individual disrupts emotion recognition. Former child soldiers in Sierra Leone reveal deficits in accurately recognizing prototypical expressions of sadness (Umiltà, Wood, Loffredo, Ravera, & Gallese, 2013). When mislabeling occurred, both they and the citizens of their wartorn country most often mistook sad expressions for anger, happiness expressions for anger, and fear expressions for sadness (Umiltà et al., 2013). The long-term effects of these emotion recognition disturbances on children, adults, and (for that matter) countries are unknown. Existing laboratory research indicates a general decline in performance on typical, static-emotion recognition tasks among healthy, older adults, although explanations of the apparent decline may be compromised by the methodologies employed (see Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011, for a review). For example, older adults judge emotion from videotaped sequences of dyadic interactions better than younger adults but perform worse on still images of single emotions (Sze, Goodkind, Gyurak, & Levenson, 2012). In general, though, cross-sectional research reveals an arc in performance, whereby very young and very old samples of individuals typically perform less well on emotion recognition tasks than those in the middle-age ranges. Age-related 118

declines for some emotions are steeper than for others. For example, differences between older and younger adult recognition rates are greatest for anger, fear, and sadness; are less for happiness and surprise; and are slightly reverse direction for disgust (Ruffman, Henry, Livingstone, & Phillips, 2008). Explanations for these age-related patterns are murky. Ruffman et al. (2008) cited evidence consistent with neurological decline. Differences in process—specifically, scan paths—are also implicated. Older people look less at the upper half of the face, and this may (Firestone, Turk-Browne, & Ryan, 2007; Sullivan, Ruffman, & Hutton, 2007) or may not (Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011) account for age declines in recognition ability. ERP research suggests a slight delay in the early processing of emotion discrimination from faces among 59- to 74-year-olds (Wieser, Mühlberger, Kenntner-Mabiala, & Pauli, 2006). That said, emotional reactivity in response to emotional facial expressions, measured physiologically and in the brain, show no agerelated difference (Wieser et al., 2006), even though other types of emotion-related stimuli do (Neiss, Leigland, Carlson, & Janowsky, 2009). Developmental trends are hard to decipher from cross-sectional data. Moreover, additional aspects of the niche may be at play here. Age subsumes factors known to influence facial signal decoding, including status and familiarity with social stimuli. For instance, facial wrinkles complicate facial signals, making emotions and intentions harder to assess and making mimicry less likely (Hess, Adams, Simard, Stevenson, & Kleck, 2012; Malatesta, Fiore, & Messina, 1987). In age-segregated niches, older adults may be used to relying on cues other than facial signals in their interactions with cohorts. Producing facial expressions of emotion. People’s first expressions may not be entirely their own; they may be shared. Faces are a platform for mimicry and imitation—two pillars of social bonds. Beginning in the first few hours of life, infants can imitate facial expressions (e.g., mouth opening, tongue protrusions, and components of emotions) modeled by adults (Field et al., 1982; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). This early matching of responses may not be reflexive, but newborns in an alert state are certainly

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prone (prepared) to do it. These early communicative proclivities have important social consequences in ways similar to touch. The synchrony inherent in face-to-face exchanges that normally occur between parents and newborns tunes developing brains to social and emotional meaning, to self, and to relationships (Feldman, 2007). Differentiation in emotional expression production. Currently debated is the degree to which the emotional expressions produced by infants represent precursors of differentiated, adult expressions in morphology and meaning. Do infant expressions in response, say, to frustrating or surprising events have the same look and feel as do the expressions of adults? Do infants display the same range of emotions, both positive and negative, that adults do? Does the niche partly shape these things? At the heart of these issues for many is the degree to which facial displays are isomorphic with particular emotional states (Lewis & Michalson, 1983; Weinberg & Tronick, 1994). An added challenge to these questions is the methodologies available to address them. Infant facial responses to emotion-eliciting events have been measured in two basic ways—first, by using anatomically based coding systems specifying the facial muscle movements linked to discrete emotions (e.g., the maximally discriminative facial action coding system [MAX; Izard, 1979], the Facial Action Coding System [FACS; Ekman & Friesen, 1978], and Baby FACS [Oster, 2006]), and second, through judgment studies in which adults match infant expressions to predicted emotion labels (judgment “accuracy”). In a comprehensive review of these studies, Camras and Shutter (2010) noted discrepancies both between coding protocols and between judges, especially for the construal of negative emotions (anger, fear, and disgust). Specifically, coding protocols for distinguishing between emotions differed between manuals, and accuracy rates for judges were described as “unimpressive” across studies (Camras & Shutter, 2010). Issues with the measurement of the dependent variable (emotion) make it a slippery target. The independent variable, emotion-eliciting events, has issues too. Common to all developmental research is the vexing problem of equivalence

across age groups; a lack of specificity and consistent potency inherent in eliciting events across age groups can muddy the findings. Indeed, across a variety of studies, emotion situations proved to be unreliable elicitors of infant facial expressions, meaning that infant facial responses to events of a given emotional tone (e.g., surprise, fear) often failed to produce these expressions, or they produced expressions of a decidedly different nature (Camras & Shutter, 2010). If theorists are right, a given, discrete emotion should be expressed exclusively in its—and only its—emotion-eliciting context. However, what parent has not had the experience that Camras (1992) described: her young baby’s look of total surprise when presented with an unsurprising, familiar toy (see also Camras, Lambrecht, & Michel, 1996)? Researchers have had better luck finding expected matches among older infants. For example, Bennett et al. (2005) compared the emotional expressions of 4- and 12-month-old babies following different, emotion-eliciting events. Matches for happiness, disgust, and anger increased with age (and mismatches generally decreased), although fear failed to show the same developmental trend. Still, few developmentalists would argue that infant emotional expressions are simple, “mini-me” versions of adult expressions. Indeed, Oster (2005) argued that infants manifest a nonverbal emotional dialect all their own and proposed it be studied that way. Cross-cultural work has shown that as late as 11 months of age, babies who react behaviorally in ways indicative of feelings of anger/frustration (produced by having their arm restrained) and fear (stimulated by presentation of a growling, gorilla-head toy) do not display discrete, facial responses of anger and fear exclusively in each respective, emotion-eliciting situation. Rather, the researchers found that whether infants were European, American, Japanese, or Chinese, their faces expressed anger and fear interchangeably across situations, signaling a sort of general negativity or distress (Camras et al., 2007; Camras, Oster, Campos, & Bakemand, 2003). So far, it appears that infant displays match generally positive or negative expressions to generally positive or negative stimulus events but that discrete emotional reactions, 119

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especially negative ones, are hard to decipher using the theories and tools at hand. Though infant facial expressions may lack specificity, they are intensitygraded, perhaps by signals as mundane as the degree of eye widening and mouth opening (Messinger, Fogel, & Dickson, 2001; Messinger, Mattson, Mahoor, & Cohn, 2012). This means that caregivers can react appropriately to the degree of delight or distress at hand even if they are unable to identify a specific cause. Thus, infant production of emotional expressions (and infant emotions) can be generally described as less differentiated than those of adults (Bennett et al., 2005; Bridges, 1932; Camras & Shutter, 2010; Widen & Russell, 2003, 2008). It takes maturation and tuning of neural circuitry for emotional responding to get organized. In reacting to their infant’s distress as signaled by facial expression, parents may have little specificity to go on (Mesman, Oster, & Camras, 2012) but ample opportunity to shape infant behavior into culturally appropriate, nonverbal dialects (Camras & Shutter, 2010; Scherer et al., 2011; Widen & Russell, 2010). Cultural practices create different, nonverbal accents of emotional expression (Marsh et al., 2003; Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2007) that may underlie ingroup advantages in recognizing and producing expressive signals (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002, 2003; Scherer et al., 2011). Niche elements of facial emotional expression production. The niche operates on children’s production of facial expressions in many ways. Family environment shapes the degree of expressivity in families (Halberstadt et al., 1999). For example, Camras and colleagues (see, e.g., Camras, Bakeman, Chen, Norris, & Cain, 2006) found that the overall expressivity of 3-year-old Chinese girls adopted as infants by European American families was more similar to European American girls than Mainland Chinese 3-year-olds when facial expressions in response to emotion-eliciting photographs were compared. The adopted girls’ facial behavior was usually midrange between the two. However, for the adopted and biological children raised by American parents, the most potent predictor of positive emotion (smiling) and of negative facial reactivity was 120

self-reported maternal strictness; strict, emotionally controlling mothers had less expressive 3-year-olds (Camras et al., 2006). These and similar findings (Oveis et al., 2009), while correlational, suggest that immediate family environments have pronounced effects on expressivity. More information is needed about how family environments look from the infant’s point of view. Some researchers have probed this question by attaching a camera to infants’ heads (Sugden, Mohamed-Ali, & Moulson, 2014; see Figure 5.2). There is more potential here than first meets the eye. While the head camera surveys what the social environment has to offer, simultaneous observation of infant gaze patterns could reveal the signals they choose to view—and to avoid. The interplay could capture how individual infants shape their nonverbal niche. Sex differences in emotional expression production. Sex differences are evident in the production of facial expressions linked to emotion. A recent

Figure 5.2. The happy-face camera captures a baby’s visual environment. The camera is located in the left eye of the happy face. Whereas the eye-tracking apparatus samples actual scanning, the head cam reveals visual opportunities in the infant’s environment. From “I Spy With My Little Eye: Typical, Daily Exposure to Faces Documented From a First-Person Infant Perspective,” by N. A. Sugden, M. I. Mohamed-Ali, and M. C. Moulson, 2014, Developmental Psychobiology, 56, p. 252. Copyright 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

The Developmental Arc of Nonverbal Communication

meta-analysis found a small but persistent gender difference in the West. Overall, girls expressed more positive emotion and “internalizing” affect (sadness, anxiety, and sympathy) than boys, whereas boys showed more “externalizing” anger (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). Socialization may be at the root of the difference. As children mature, they learn both explicit and subtle display rules not only from parents but from peers. In both sexes, this leads to the dampening of emotional expressions conveying vulnerability and anger (von Salisch, 2001). Girls are generally encouraged to be more expressive than boys, albeit in gender-role consistent ways (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). For example, a meta-analysis revealed that females smile more and for different reasons than do males (LaFrance, Hecht, & Paluck, 2003; see also Chapter 6, this handbook). Across studies, smiling reflected more than positive affect. Social signals from facial expressions. Human facial expressions can be viewed through the statussignaling lens used by ethologists and behavioral ecologists who study communication in nonhuman social species. The basic premise shared by researchers from this perspective is that there is a lot less emotion than meets the eye when facial muscular movements are displayed. Facial movements relay messages about social status and condition; that is, they render social information about receptivity (submissiveness, appeasement, affiliation) or threat

(a)

(b)

(dominance, aggression, rejection) quite apart from any read-out of the emotional state of the expresser (Fridlund, 1997; Fridlund & Russell, 2006; Keating, 1985, 2002). Smiling, for example, need not reflect the happiness of the expresser to signal appeasement and to invite approach (Volkmar & Siegel, 1982). Lowered brows project dominance (Blurton Jones,1971; Keating & Bai, 1986) and ward off approach (Camras, 1977), regardless of whether the signaler is feeling angry. The primate tongue show, whereby the tongue is protruded slightly between closed teeth, also inhibits approach (Smith, 1977). The primate play face—a wide, open-mouth smile, often displayed with head tilted backward and throat exposed—indicates that rough-and-tumble play is just that—play—with no threat intended (van Hooff, 1972). The pout of frustrated offspring is known to parents all over the world (Camras & Shutter, 2010). What is interesting about these and other facial status gestures is that they are similar in form and function to nonhuman primate facial signals; in many cases, they are believed to be homologous (Keating et al., 1981; Lockard, Fahrenbruch, Smith, & Morgan, 1977; Shariff & Tracy, 2011; van Hooff, 1972). The panels of Figure 5.3 provide illustrations of children’s shy (submissive) smiles, tongue shows, and play faces. Facial status gestures are robust signals that convey intentions, regulate social interactions,

(c)

Figure 5.3. Depictions of facial gestures suspected of having phyletic roots: (A) shy smile (photograph by Photolibrary Collection: Alphonse Pagano/Getty Images), (B) tongue show (photograph by Ashley Cole Siferd), and (C) play faces (photograph by Riser Collection/Cultura: Patrick Wittmann/Getty Images). Reprinted with permission.

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and serve impression management goals. In earlier decades, they were extensively studied by human ethologists interested in the role gestural communication played in the formation of status relationships and hierarchies in children (e.g., Blurton Jones, 1971; Brannigan & Humphries, 1972; Grant, 1969). Like status hierarchies (Mascaro & Csibra, 2012; Zitek & Tiedens, 2012), facial status gestures are readily accessible. For example, Zivin (1977) identified the “plus face,” an expression children display in reaction to victory following agonistic episodes and a reliable signal of their relative social status. No smile, compared to slight smiles, made adults appear to be the one who “tells other people what to do” to children in the United States and to men and women in 11 countries around the world (Keating & Bai, 1986; Keating et al., 1981; cf. Hareli, Shomrat, & Hess, 2009). Displays that include facial cues for dominance and submissiveness—pride and shame, respectively—are similarly perceived by children and adults from disparate cultures (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008; Tracy & Robins, 2008; Tracy, Shariff, Zhao, & Henrich, 2013; Widen & Russell, 2010; cf. Cole, Tamang, & Shrestha, 2006). Embarrassment, which also comprises submissive facial cues, conveys appeasement (Keltner, 1995). The spontaneous, facial productions of smiles, pride, and embarrassment in blind people look pretty much like those of sighted people (Cole, Jenkins, & Shott, 1989; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1973; Matsumoto & Willingham, 2009). Thus, the social status signals conveyed by faces reveal some of the same robustness that facial expressions of emotions do. Observations of children’s spontaneous, facial expressions in naturalistic environments offer alternatives to understanding the development of facial expressions. If you try very hard, you can fit preschoolers’ facial actions to incomplete displays of prototypical emotions. Trying much less hard, they are consistent with nonhuman primate status signaling systems (e.g., Gaspar & Esteves, 2012; Keating & Heltman, 1994; Ostrov & Keating, 2004). In fact, presuming that a particular emotion lurks beneath a given expression can be misleading. For example, in a study of bids for help on the playground, distraught children who looked sad received less help from peers than victims who smiled at 122

their classmates, inviting approach. The nonverbal exchanges of adolescents and their parents are a study in approach/avoidance signaling. Kahlbaugh and Haviland (1994) reported that during a family interaction task, avoidance signaling through facial expressions increased from pre- to late adolescence. Parents, too, signaled more avoidance as their teenagers aged (Kahlbaugh & Haviland, 1994). Though the specific expressions recorded by these experimenters were labeled as basic emotions, whether the teens or parents actually felt any of them was not determined. Data like these are consistent with a status cues approach that emphasizes the importance of communication over emotion. Still, connections can be made between status cues and emotion signaling. For example, Sacco and Hugenberg (2009) proposed that the expressional configurations of fear and anger may have evolved by mimicking status-related physiognomic traits. Emotion theorists have explored the status signaling value of basic emotional expressions and other displays linked to emotional tone, especially credibility, pride, shame, and embarrassment (e.g., Hareli, Harush, et al., 2009; Hareli & Hess, 2012; Keltner, 1995; Shariff & Tracy, 2011; Todorov, Baron, & Oosterhof, 2008). Some developmental differences have begun to emerge from this research. When judging trustworthiness from faces, for example, younger and older adults show different patterns of association between credibility assessments and gradations of happy/angry expressions (Éthier-Majcher, Joubert, & Gosselin, 2013; cf. Todorov et al., 2008). One question that could be asked about status and emotion signaling systems is “Which came first and serves more ‘basic’ functions?” Did status (approach/avoidance) communication precede emotion communication or vice versa? The point is likely moot at this way station in evolutionary history. Nonverbal communication is enabled by the brain, brain systems evolve by accretion (Konner, 2010), and it is likely that what came before is embedded in each assemblage of cues and meanings.

Communication Through Vision: Developmental Trends in Body Expression As for facial expression, the visual channel is the transmission line for expression through body

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movement. Developmental studies on the recognition and production of expressive body signals are spotty. Here, I review classic and recent studies of the role of body gestures in social interaction during infancy, childhood, and early adulthood—specifically, pointing, nodding, and body movements expressive of emotion. Though there is considerable research on relationships between gesture and language, that topic remains outside the purview of this chapter (see Chapter 12, this handbook). Recognizing and producing body movement. Body movement attracts attention from the earliest moments of life. Newborns favor nodding, smiling faces over stationary ones; looming bodies scare them (Fantz, 1964). In the first few months of life, infants begin to discriminate between motion stimuli compatible with body movement and other motion not natural for bodies. Fox and McDaniel (1982) demonstrated this change in infants 2–6 months of age. Using point-light stimuli, 4- and 6-month-olds showed greatest sensitivity to bodylike motion. Relational movement is also attractive to infants. The sequential actions of giving and receiving objects in interaction with another person are some of the earliest forms of play and may be the embodiment of a human proclivity (preparedness) for reciprocity. At the very least, “give and take” games teach contingency—that personal power lies in the coordination of action and reaction. Babies seem to get the message. As early as 5 months of age, babies prefer puppets whose movements facilitate rather than block the goal-directed actions of another puppet, leading some to believe that this kind of indirect reciprocity lies at the heart of a “moral” human core (Hamlin, 2013). Pointing gestures. Pointing is also an early, shared, communicative signal enabling coordinated action in response to co-orientation toward a common focus. Pointing can be accomplished with body parts (e.g., fingers, heads) and with gaze. Typical infants follow the gaze direction of others to proximate targets between 3 and 6 months of age, and to more distal targets by the end of the first year (D’Entremont, Hains, & Muir, 1997). Most infants respond to and deploy pointing with fingers at

about 12 months of age, well before they speak, and use it as a social signal to direct others’ attention (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005). By 14 months of age, infants recognize that adult pointing with fingers and gaze are purposeful signals worth their attention. Thus, infants’ use of gaze cues to determine the location of a hidden toy improves with age up to 24 months (Behne, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2005). At 25 months of age, infants use pointing to show an experimenter where a toy is hidden. Infant chimpanzees do too, the difference being that infants point regardless of who receives the prize (the infant or the experimenter), whereas chimpanzee point only under conditions where they receive it (Bullinger, Zimmermann, Kaminski, & Tomasello, 2011). This difference in capacity may reflect human preparedness for empathy. Head movements. Social information is derived from movement at the top of the body. Head nods and shakes were studied over time as U.S. mothers interacted with their 14- to 30-month-olds in a natural setting (Fusaro, Vallotton, & Harris, 2014). Nods were generally confirmatory; mothers used them as a sign of approval and to encourage early attempts at language. Head shakes were less frequently observed and were used to discourage toddler activities. Generally speaking, head nods convey appeasement, not threat (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1972). They may be a therapist’s best friend when interacting with clients; nodding is part of the “immediacy” constellation of behaviors that signals engagement and encourages conversation (Mehrabian, 1971). When in conversation, Western women both nod and are nodded to more than men (Helweg-Larsen, Cunningham, Carrico, & Pergram, 2004). Research using avatar stimuli indicate that the dynamics of the movement itself are suggestive of femininity (Boker et al., 2011). Emotion and body movements. Body poses and actions convey emotion. Characteristics of gait—such as the way an adult swings their arm, and the speed and length of their stride—convey varying degrees of happiness, sadness, and anger (Montepare, Goldstein, & Clausen, 1987; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1993). Adults recognize basic, discrete emotions quite well from body movement and poses (Aviezer, Trope, & Todorov, 123

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2012; de Gelder, 2009; de Gelder et al., 2012; Peelen, Atkinson, Andersson, & Vuilleumier, 2007), leading some to argue that much of the time, emotion is best detected from bodies, especially when action rather than empathy is needed (Aviezer et al., 2012; de Gelder, 2009). That may be so, and researchers have begun to probe its developmental time course. Infant discrimination of body emotion cues has been tested using stimuli from adult studies (Zieber, Kangas, Hock, & Bhatt, 2014). In the first experiment, 6.5-month-olds watched short video clips of adult models (with masked faces) enacting “happy,” “angry,” or “neutral” emotions; models enacted each state in their own way. Pairs of different enactments were shown side by side, and when infant looking was recorded, a clear preference emerged for happy versus neutral videos when stimuli were shown upright (Zieber et al., 2014). In a second experiment, 6.5-month-old infants “matched” happy–angry videos to happy–angry vocal expressions; they looked longer when the emotional signals from body and voice were consistent. The researchers interpreted these results as demonstrating both discrimination (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) of emotion from body movements (Zieber et al., 2014), though specific emotion cues could not be identified. Children’s abilities to decode expressive body movements have been investigated through the medium of dance (Boone & Cunningham, 1998). Videotapes of a male and a female adult performing four target emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, and fear—were presented to 4-, 5-, and 8-year-olds as well as to college-age adults. In this study, each videotape was copied and altered by removing selected, emotion cues to diminish the intensity of each portrayal. Videos of different emotions and different intensities were presented in pairs, and the children and adults chose the one that best matched each emotion (e.g., “Who’s happy?”) and one that conveyed more emotion (“Who’s really happy?”). Four-year-olds were above chance for sadness, and 5-year-olds were above chance for happiness, sadness, and fear. Eight-year-olds and adults performed similarly and were above chance for all four emotions. Sensitivity to intensity followed a 124

similar developmental pattern, suggesting that children’s skill in differentiating emotion from dance movements increases between 5 and 8 years of age (Boone & Cunningham, 1998). Children’s developing attunements to body movement is evident during interactions with peers; a walk through age-segregated, U.S. preschool classrooms during free play period provides a developmental “tour.” Basic, instrumental acts of aggression—such as hitting and pushing, a common form of communication among 1- and 2-year-olds—are phased out in the 3- and 4-yearold classrooms (Ingram, 2014) as teachers’ cheery voices encourage children to “Use your words!” to solve disputes. Observation reveals that preschoolers largely use facial and body status gestures to get their way (e.g., Keating & Heltman, 1994; Ostrov & Keating, 2004). Common body dominance signals include arms akimbo, chin thrusts, fist displays, pointing, and erect posture. Common affiliative or submissiveness body gestures include shrugging, hunched shoulders, closed postures, open-palms, bowed head, and feigned shoe-tying when under attack (Camras, 1977; Keating & Heltman, 1994; Zivin, 1977). Apart from shoe-tying, several of these gestures are similar to the signals nonhuman primates display when expressing dominance, submissiveness, and reconciliation (De Waal, 1990; Goodall, 1971). Recordings of children’s dominance and submissiveness gestures can be used to determine status relationships and rankings, to predict resource control in free play and task situations, and to predict teacher and peer assessments of a classmate’s social status (Keating & Heltman, 1994; Ostrov & Keating, 2004). Artful displays of dominance gestures are characteristic of preschool classroom leaders, who are also best at managing their body and face cues so as to appear truthful when telling a lie to an adult; the same holds for high school and college students (Keating & Heltman, 1994; Keating, Little, & Colligan, 2012). Nonverbal acting skills belong within the constellation of social competence (Cole, 1986; Feldman, Tomasian, & Coats, 1999; Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001). Posture is a potent cue for status among children and adults. Weisfeld and Beresford (1982) studied the postures of children engaged in a dodgeball

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game on the playground. Erect postures signaled successful play; slumped postures signaled failure. Expansive body postures are characteristic of dominance displays and power in humans and chimpanzees, and they parallel elements of human victory displays following sporting events (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010; Mitchell & Maple, 1985). Hwang and Matsumoto (2014) analyzed the bodily responses to victory and defeat in Olympic judo competitions; some of the contestants were blind. The researchers identified a constellation of behaviors displayed only by victors that included aspects of body expansion, aggressive facial gestures, and direct gaze (Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014). So far, it appears that children and adults enact postures and perform victory displays that may have phyletic roots. The next question is how these signals influence social targets and future contests. Summary of developmental trends in communication through face and body. Sensory experience in utero is richer in tactile and olfactory stimulation than in visual stimulation, where varying amounts of light likely account for the only excitement. Considering how restricted visual experience is in utero, and how novel and unrehearsed communication through visual means is to newborns, it is remarkable how quickly babies become adept at interpreting and producing face and body signals. Biological preparedness serves them well from the start, but the infant’s self-driven engagement happens soon thereafter. Neonatal reflexes give up control after a month, and developmental processes enabling differentiation explode in the first year of life. The lively debate over connections between visual signals and underlying emotion has been stimulating in its own way, driving researchers to place high value on cross-cultural research and on other niche factors. Though the human capacity for communication through visual signals appears to improve and then decline with age, limitations in both methodology and explanation make this a tentative conclusion. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS Communication in social species is critical to survival. At no time is this truer than during development,

when offspring depend on the dedication of caregivers for their very lives. It is in these early days that the capacities to form and maintain social bonds are set loose, exercised, and expanded. It is then that people’s phylogenetically oldest and (perhaps) wisest communication systems, nonverbal ones, take center stage. The three sensory platforms of the body reviewed here—touch, olfaction, and vision—enable the kind of information exchange that social bonds have come to rely on. Each platform feathers the nest of the developing organism by channeling information about the social and physical environment. From nonverbal tactile, olfactory, and visual cues, babies detect whether they are with familiar others who make them feel secure. These nonverbal signals of identity (e.g., familiarity), affective state (e.g., emotion, arousal), and social status (e.g., dominance, threat, subordinate, affiliative) provide the basics building blocks of social bonds. They differ in the degree to which physical proximity between infant and caregiver is required. In likely parallel to their rates of use, touch and olfactory signaling systems require a level of proximity that face and body visual cues do not; the latter system grants increasingly mobile offspring more independence. Elaborated versions of these same nonverbal communication capacities characterize peer bonds and pair bonds later in life. The developmental constructs used to organize researchers’ thinking about the development of nonverbal communication capacities—preparedness, increasing voluntary control, and greater differentiation—have limited reach. Although these three forces would seem to propel nonverbal abilities monotonically upward, friction from sources embedded in the niche gradually slow their rise. Physical constraints on sensory processes are only a piece of the picture. Cultural constraints, expectations, habits, and display rules channel differentiation and entrain voluntary action to standards (e.g., Matsumoto, Yoo, & Fontaine, 2008). You have only to compare the expressivity of young children to that of adults to reach this understanding. Tracings of the developmental arc of nonverbal communication are incomplete without longitudinal data charting the varied experiences of individuals 125

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around the globe. To construct the whole story, effort will be needed to integrate the ontogeny of nonverbal communication as a part of life history’s puzzle (Hawley, 2014). What functions do signaling systems serve, how are they integrated, and what supports or deflects them? Without observation and experimentation in actual social environments, this will surely be a difficult task. What the researcher sees in the lab is known, but what does the nonverbal communication environment look like to the baby, the child, the adolescent, and the adult whose job it is to negotiate it? What opportunities does it provide, how do its moving components complement one another, and how is it shaped by the individual? So far, this story of the “arc” is only roughed in. Research suggests that expressive and receptive capacities build, peak, and decline with old age. The general progression is set in motion within the boundaries of evolved capacities sensitive to a confluence of “niche” elements that organize the developmental environment (Super & Harkness, 2002). Understanding those environments requires finegrained, longitudinal, cross-cultural studies to flesh out the developmental processes responsible for differentiation. For example, some researchers propose dynamic systems models, whereby expressions of undifferentiated, positive or negative states of arousal are “trained” to different, discrete emotions and expressions through socialization and other synergistic processes (Camras & Witherington, 2005; Fogel et al., 1992; see also Lewis & Granic, 2002). These models emphasize plasticity in the development of nonverbal communication systems. Plasticity notwithstanding, some signals are simply hard to miss no matter who or where or how old you are. The fact that infants readily interpret canine signals correctly reveals just how tuned to expressive cues human brains have become (Flom, Whipple, & Hyde, 2009). There is much that researchers do not know about the “adaptive wisdom” of nonverbal communication systems and how essential they are to human nature and society (Campbell, 1975). As technological interfaces expand and contract the universe of human communication, the fact that face-toface nonverbal communication likely got us to where we are today suggests it has much to teach us. 126

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Chapter 6

Gender and Nonverbal Behavior Marianne LaFrance and Andrea C. Vial

It is widely believed that women and men are fundamentally different from each other. Indeed, the belief that males and females possess different traits, abilities, and inclinations pervades all age groups, all time periods, and all cultures (Kite, Deaux, & Haines, 2008). Such beliefs, better described as stereotypes, have also been found to be highly resistant to change (Dodge, Gilroy, & Fenzel, 1995; Heilman, 2001). Two dimensions, communality and agency, capture a multitude of perceived differences (Bakan, 1966; Kite et al., 2008). Women are consistently characterized as having a consistent predisposition to be communal—to care for and attend to the wellbeing of others. The typical woman is thought to be kind, caring, sensitive, empathic, and emotional. However, men are believed to be primarily agentic and instrumental. The characteristic male is felt to be independent, confident, decisive, aggressive, and strong (Kite et al., 2008). It is not surprising then that people believe that women and men show distinctive patterns of nonverbal behavior. For example, Briton and Hall (1995) found that people think that women are more nonverbally expressive and responsive than are men. Women are also thought to be better at sending and deciphering nonverbal messages. In contrast, males are believed to be louder and more interruptive and to show more restless body movements and dysfluent vocal behaviors, such as inserting filled and unfilled pauses while speaking. The issue here, as is the case with stereotypes more generally, has to do with the validity or accuracy of such beliefs. This chapter addresses just that question and two related

ones—namely, what gender dimension best describes differences that are examined, and if sex differences are found, to what are they to be attributed? There is more to gender beliefs than simple assumptions such as the idea that women express more positive emotion than men (Shields, 1987). Not only are men and women believed to have different repertoires of nonverbal behavior, some nonverbal behaviors are understood a priori to be feminine or masculine. Therefore, crying—which is believed to be something that women do more than men (Vingerhoets & Scheirs, 2000)—denotes femininity in the crier (sometimes called effeminacy if the crier happens to be male). This pregendering of nonverbal behavior reinforces ideas about who (men or women) should exhibit which behaviors, and it impinges on what behaviors men and women choose to display when motivated to avoid being perceived as gender deviant. In fact, engaging in the appropriate nonverbal gender repertoire (and avoiding cross-gender behavior) is part of what some scholars refer to as “doing gender” well (West & Zimmerman, 1987). DECONSTRUCTING GENDER A substantial body of empirical work has addressed whether and to what degree women and men differ in their nonverbal behavior. Nonetheless, many studies have been primarily descriptive of sex differences and only explanatory, if at all, after the fact. Although some researchers have contributed sophisticated and nuanced examinations of individual variation and

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-006 APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, D. Matsumoto, H. C. Hwang, and M. G. Frank (Editors-in-Chief) Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

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causal factors affecting gendered aspects of nonverbal behavior, we believe this extensive literature would benefit from first considering the relatively unexplored territory that becomes illuminated by deconstructing what goes into gender in the first place. By deconstructing or problematizing gender, we mean expanding the typical binary category described by biological sex (i.e., male and female) and focusing instead on the multiple ways that gender can be understood. For example, one line of work argues that a key dimension known as sex-role identification or psychological gender (Bem, 1977) reflects the degree to which women and men identify with characteristics that society typically assigns to females and males. Regarding nonverbal behavior, the question then converts to whether a person’s (male or female) degree of identification with feminine and masculine traits is reflected in his or her nonverbal behavior. An example of the standard question is whether women smile more than men. A sex-role identification question asks, instead, whether people who score high in femininity smile more than those who score low in femininity and/or more than people who score high in masculinity regardless of their sex. A constrained sex-role identification (masculine sex-typed or feminine sex-typed) theoretically motivates men and women, respectively, to self-present in gender-normative ways and to avoid behavior that is considered more characteristic of the opposite sex (Bem, 1977). Androgynous men and women, in contrast, who identify equally with masculine and feminine characteristics are theoretically more flexible and less consistent in their nonverbal behavior because they have larger repertoire from which to draw, and thus they may freely engage in nonverbal behavior that is seen as stereotypical of the other sex if the situation calls for it (M. LaFrance & Carmen, 1980). Thus, studies exploring the interactions between biological sex and psychological gender arguably offer an expanded framework for understanding the relationship between gender and nonverbal behavior. A sole focus on biological sex is likely to yield findings that are more informative of the ways gender norms impinge on the behavior of men and women than they are informative about the ways in which men and women choose to adopt particular nonverbal behaviors. 140

Just as sex-role orientation (psychological gender) appears to moderate sex differences in nonverbal behavior, sexual orientation is also likely to interact with biological and psychological gender and to modulate gender differences in a variety of nonverbal behaviors. To date, researchers have shown surprisingly little interest in documenting these effects. Numerous common stereotypes suggest that gay men and lesbian women possess nonverbal “markers” that distinguish them from heterosexual men and women. Indeed, some research has confirmed that gay men readily recognize and utilize these cues to identify one another (Carroll & Gilroy, 2002). It turns out that straight people are also able to identify above chance which men are gay and which are straight from photographs of their faces (Rule, Ambady, Adams, & Macrae, 2008). Yet, whether the nonverbal behaviors of gay and lesbian individuals differ from those of heterosexual males and females (and if so, in what ways) remains essentially unexplored. Additionally, homophobic attitudes and vigilance on the part of heterosexual individuals (particularly men) to behave in hetero-normative ways may influence the nonverbal behavior of heterosexual individuals in ways that would not necessarily be predicted by biological sex alone. Thus, focusing exclusively on the nonverbal behaviors of heterosexual men and women will likely advance our knowledge of the ways in which heterosexual scripts and heteronormative pressures modulate the nonverbal expressions of men and women, rather than increasing our understanding of the ways gender broadly construed is manifest in the display of nonverbal cues. Biological sex, psychological gender, and sexual orientation not only interact in complex ways to produce unique patterns of nonverbal behavior but gender aspects of nonverbal behavior are also exquisitely sensitive to social context. For example, M. LaFrance and Carmen (1980) showed how the gendered nature of a task (instrumental or expressive) interacted with gender and sex-role orientation to determine vocal nonverbal behavior. The next section more fully discusses how context affects gender aspects of nonverbal behavior. For the moment, it is important to note one further way that emerges when gender is deconstructed. Some contexts are

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also gendered not just in the sense that they are more likely to be occupied by females versus males but because the behaviors expected there are presumed to have a more feminine or masculine quality to them such that whoever temporarily resides in such spaces will more likely show the expected behavior regardless of his or her sex. CONSIDERING CONTEXT As we will show, the presence of even small changes in a given setting can magnify or minimize the expression of nonverbal behavior differences in men and women, such that gender differences in a given domain (e.g., smiling) will be larger in certain contexts and smaller or even reversed in others. We have mentioned that both men and women strive to “do gender” well so as to avoid being perceived as genderdeviant (e.g., West & Zimmerman, 1987). This suggests that, to the extent that an individual feels that his or her behavior is being monitored or judged, he or she is likely to respond by behaving in gendernormative ways. Alternatively, the absence of observation by others may lighten the pressure to behave in accord with gendered expectations. In the first instance, sex differences may be more manifestly evident than in the latter instance. The key point is that certain aspects of the situation (e.g., the presence of observers) make gender norms and expectations more salient and, thus, trigger more gender-normative behavior. This has been shown for the behavior of smiling. As will be discussed in more detail, women tend to smile more than men, but this difference is even greater when participants feel that they are being observed by others (M. LaFrance, Hecht, & Paluck, 2003). There are two additional contextual factors that moderate the size of gender differences in nonverbal behavior. These have to do with the number of people who are present as well as how many of each sex are present (e.g., their sex composition). For example, research has found that men have a higher tendency than women to interrupt speakers and that this difference is especially large in multiperson compared to two-person encounters (Anderson & Leaper, 1998). Additionally, the largest sex differences for interruptions occur in mixed- rather than same-gender groups or dyads. Thus, these data

show that when it comes to interruptive behavior, a larger difference favoring males will be found for mixed-sex groups; in these conditions, men would be expected to interrupt the most, and women the least. The difference would be attenuated, and a much smaller effect would emerge in same-sex interactions involving only two people. However, gender composition has the opposite effect on gaze behavior such that the largest gender differences emerge in same- rather than mixed-gender dyads (J. A. Hall, 1984; J. A. Hall & Gunnery, 2013; Yee, Bailenson, Urbanek, Chang, & Merget, 2007). Women tend to gaze at their interaction partners more than men do, and they also tend to be looked at more than men are. Both factors lead to the highest levels of partner gazing in female–female pairs. Similarly, some research suggests that touch behavior is more acceptable and expected in female–female dyads compared to male–male dyads (Derlega, Catanzaro, & Lewis, 2001). Thus, it is clear that an examination of gender differences in nonverbal behavior that fails to consider the number and gender of interaction partners will result in an incomplete or incorrect picture of how much males and females differ in their nonverbal behavior. Finally, situational demands may override gender norms to affect sex differences in nonverbal cues. Various tasks and roles often prescribe particular nonverbal behaviors of whoever is called upon to engage in the salient activity. The effect of such situational demands is often to minimize sex differences in accompanying nonverbal behavior. For example, although women generally tend to smile more than men, this difference is greatly reduced when both male and female participants are engaged in caregiving activities (M. LaFrance et al., 2003). Likewise, although women on average orient their bodies more face-on with their interaction partners (J. A. Hall, 1984), both men and women orient their bodies toward one another (Fichten, Tagalakis, Judd, Wright, & Amsel, 1992) when flirtation is the operative dynamic. However, there are social contexts in which gender polarization is assumed, and in that case, gender differences in nonverbal behavior are probably accentuated. Finally, in some contexts, behaviors can become acceptable that are typically not regarded as such— for example, women touch other women more than 141

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men touch other men, and both men and women consider male–male touch to be somewhat atypical and perhaps inappropriate (Derlega et al., 2001). However, in a stereotypically masculine context, such as contact sports, these norms are more lax; male–male touch is greater, and, though not eliminated, the size of the gender difference is substantially reduced (Kneidinger, Maple, & Tross, 2001). GENDER DIFFERENCES IN NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR We hope the preceding discussion demonstrates reasons for regarding gender as a multidimensional construct as well as the need to attend to context so as to understand why elaboration is needed regarding whether men and women differ in their nonverbal behavior. In this section, we discuss sex differences in specific behaviors, summarizing reliable findings from the existing literature. To do this, we draw on several meta-analyses, but we also cite and discuss individual studies that have taken a more nuanced approach to the question of gender and nonverbal behavior. Within each section, we also provide a brief discussion of remaining questions and avenues for future research. We cover nonverbal behaviors that have received the most empirical attention: encoding and decoding accuracy, smiling, gazing, touching, interpersonal distance, body orientation, gesture and posture, and vocal nonverbal behavior (e.g., interrupting). However, we also include sections discussing some nonverbal behaviors for which the study of gender differences has been relatively minimal: gait, blushing, and crying. Finally, we devote a section to the discussion of gender differences in nonverbal behavior in the case of heterosexual flirtation, as it offers a social ritual where gender norms and expectations impinge on the nonverbal behavior of men and women as they interact with each other.

Encoding Accuracy Women are more accurate than men in producing and conveying nonverbal cues—that is, others are more accurate in reading women’s nonverbal behavior than they are at accurately reading men’s expressive behavior. Presumably, this is the case because 142

women are more expressive in general than men and/or the cues they send are more easily read. Overall, this sex difference is substantial (r = .25; 35 studies in J. A. Hall’s, 1984, metaanalysis). Depending on how such a difference is observed, whether researchers measure the spontaneous nonverbal behavior of men and women, or whether men and women are asked to deliberately convey particular emotions or affective sentiments, women have an advantage over men in terms of the ability to produce nonverbal behavior that others can read as intended (J. A. Hall, 1984). This difference is stronger for facial expressions (e.g., smiling, frowning) than for vocal cues (e.g., loudness, pitch; J. A. Hall, 1984). Meta-analyses show, however, that gender differences in encoding accuracy vary in size depending on other factors so that it is not always the case that women are clearer senders than men. For instance, sex differences in sending accuracy increase with age, such that there are greater differences among adult men and women than among boys and girls (J. A. Hall, 1984), and research indicates that this difference is mostly driven by a definite decrease in the accuracy of facial encoding by boys after 4 years of age (Buck, 1977). In addition, research on prepubescent children suggests that greater social competence among girls is associated with increased encoding ability, but the same relationship with social competence does not hold for boys (Custrini & Feldman, 1989). It is worth noting that gender differences in encoding accuracy and overall expressivity do not appear to derive from a difference in how much women and men experience emotion. In other words, the reasons why women exhibit an advantage over men in the capacity and the tendency to be more nonverbally expressive are greater than a simple difference in how and how much men and women experience emotions. Although cultural stereotypes abound that women are more emotional than men (Fischer, 1993; M. LaFrance & Banaji, 1992; Shields, 1987; J. E. Williams & Best, 1990), empirical evidence for this gender difference in experienced emotion is inconsistent. In fact, even though women have been observed to be more spontaneously expressive than men, women

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and men report experiencing the same emotions to the same extent (Barrett, Robin, Pietromonaco, & Eyssell, 1998; Kring & Gordon, 1998; Robinson, Johnson, & Shields, 1998), and studies comparing the physiological reactions of men and women have found that, if anything, men’s physiological responses to emotion-inducing events tend to be stronger than women’s (Kring & Gordon, 1998). Thus, although women and men seem to experience the same emotions to the same degree, women are consistently more nonverbally expressive (and more readable) than are men. The sex difference in encoding accuracy is likely due to changes in both male and female behavior: Men are more likely to suppress overt displays of emotion where women do not, but in some contexts, women actually amplify their expressive behaviors (M. LaFrance & Banaji, 1992; see also Hochschild, 1983). In support for male suppression, there is evidence that high expressivity by males is often perceived as questionable, and even young boys anticipate negative repercussions for openly expressing emotion (Fuchs & Thelen, 1988). As to whether femininity is associated with greater expressivity, Zuckerman, DeFrank, Spiegel, and Larrance (1982) found that more accurate encoders of intentional cues (facial and vocal) were those who scored higher on femininity and lower on masculinity.

Remaining Questions The finding that encoding accuracy decreases sharply in males during childhood suggests that socialization plays a significant role affecting the inclination or ability to display one’s feelings and intentions nonverbally. However, except for Zuckerman et al.’s (1982) study noted earlier, little research to date has examined whether sex-role identification also affects encoding accuracy. In short, the degree to which a person identifies as feminine appears to predict encoding accuracy in both men and women. Narus and Fischer (1982) also found that androgynous males were more emotionally expressive than “masculine” men. As is the case with several nonverbal communication modalities, researchers exploring gender differences in encoding accuracy have focused primarily on heterosexual men and women, whereas little is known as to whether sexual orientation

might moderate these differences. For example, the ability to accurately communicate nonverbally may be higher in gay men compared to heterosexual men and perhaps lower in lesbians than heterosexual women. Additionally, although observers can more accurately identify emotional states from viewing female than male faces (Wagner, MacDonald, & Manstead, 1986), this pattern does not generalize to all emotions. For example, there is evidence that women are more likely than men to suppress the expression of anger, presumably because anger is seen to be incompatible with femininity or prescriptive gender stereotypes (Heilman, 2001; Lerner, 1985; Rudman, 1998). This suggests a possible interaction between sex-role identification and situation on the nonverbal expressions of men and women, such that depending on the situation (e.g., a baby shower vs. a competitive encounter), sex-typed (but not androgynous) men and women would be expected to differ the most in their nonverbal behavior.

Decoding Accuracy Women are also more accurate than men in correctly deciphering the nonverbal behaviors of others, regardless of the gender of the target person (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001; Chan, Rogers, Parisotto, & Biesanz, 2011; J. A. Hall, 1978, 1984; J. A. Hall & Matsumoto, 2004; Letzring, 2010; Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979; Sasson et al., 2010; Thomas & Fletcher, 2003; Vogt & Colvin, 2003; but see Ickes, Gesn, & Graham, 2000, for contradicting results). This sex difference has been amply demonstrated in children and adolescents as well as adults (Boyatzis, Chazan, & Ting, 1993; McClure, 2000; Székely et al., 2011). In fact, both meta- analyses (J. A. Hall, 1978, 1984; McClure, 2000) and individual studies (L. M. Williams et al., 2009) have found that although age does not significantly moderate the effect of gender on decoding accuracy, the size of the gender difference tends to be somewhat larger among adults (ranging between r = .20 and r = .25 in J. A. Hall’s, 1984, meta- analysis) than among children and adolescents (r = .18; 60 studies in McClure’s, 2000, meta- analysis). Cross-cultural research also indicates 143

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that the country of the participant does not moderate gender effect size for decoding accuracy (J. A. Hall, 1978; Izard, 1971; Merten, 2005; Scherer, Banse, & Wallbott, 2001). Women’s higher decoding accuracy also translates into their advantage at recalling other people’s nonverbal behaviors, such as gazing, smiling, and self-touching (J. A. Hall, Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2006). Although men tend to be generally less successful than women at accurately decoding the nonverbal cues of others (J. A. Hall, 1978, 1984), the sexes part company even more so when the nonverbal cues in question are ambiguous (Farris, Treat, Viken, & McFall, 2008). For example, in studies assessing the perception of nonverbal behaviors that may signal sexual interest, the data indicate that males tend to perceive significantly more flirtatiousness, promiscuousness, and seductiveness than female perceivers (ranging from r = .09 to r = .20 in the meta-analysis by B. H. La France, Henningsen, Oates, & Shaw, 2009). Some have suggested that these results are consistent with error management theory, whereby from an evolutionary perspective, it would be most advantageous for men to overestimate women’s sexual interest because a false-negative (i.e., missing cues of sexual interest) would lead to a missed mating opportunity (B. H. La France et al., 2009). This presumably causes men to have a lower decisional threshold than women for labeling ambiguous behaviors as sexual (Haselton & Nettle, 2006). The problem with this explanation, however, is that men “see” more sexual interest in both males and females (Shotland & Craig, 1988). Additionally, Farris et al. (2008) found that male participants mistook friendliness for flirtatiousness just as often as they misread flirtatiousness as friendliness, providing evidence for men’s lower ability to accurately read the nonverbal cues of others. Finally, some research suggests that, regardless of the gender of the perceiver, the accuracy with which specific emotions are decoded may differ greatly depending on the gender of the target and the specific emotions in question. For example, Plant, Hyde, Keltner, and Devine (2000) asked participants to interpret photographs of adults showing ambiguous anger/sadness expressions, and they found that female targets were rated as sadder and that male targets were rated as angrier, consistent 144

with gender stereotypes. Female targets’ poses were rated as a mixture of anger and sadness even when unambiguous expressions were presented (Plant et al., 2000). Similarly, Hess, Adams, Grammer, and Kleck (2009) found that androgynous faces were more consistently and more quickly recognized as male versus female when they displayed anger versus happiness, respectively, which suggests that gender stereotypes of emotion may greatly influence observers’ accuracy when decoding ambiguous facial expressions.

Remaining Questions As is the case for encoding accuracy, sex-role identification, namely, the degree to which a person self-identifies as feminine, appears to be a better predictor of decoding accuracy than biological sex—but, again, little research has seriously tested this idea. One study is illustrative, however. Trommsdorff and John (1992) examined the communal orientation and femininity of relationship partners as they decoded each other’s emotions. They found that decoding was better to the degree to which perceivers had a feminine gender-role orientation. Likewise, as is the case with other nonverbal behaviors, researchers exploring gender differences in decoding accuracy have focused primarily on heterosexual men and women, whereas little is known as to whether sexual orientation might moderate these differences. For example, the ability to accurately communicate nonverbally may be higher in gay men compared to heterosexual men. Similarly, some have proposed that perceptual accuracy provides gay men and lesbian women with self-protection from homophobic violence, as it increases the likelihood that they will identify other gay/lesbian individuals (Carroll & Gilroy, 2002). Other research has shown that gays and lesbians have higher accuracy than heterosexual men and women when judging sexual orientation based on nonverbal behavior and facial expression (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999). However, it is not known whether this higher accuracy generalizes beyond the detection of sexual orientation—it is possible that gay men might have higher decoding accuracy than heterosexual men in general (and perhaps lesbian women might have an advantage over heterosexual women as well). These associations need to be empirically tested.

Gender and Nonverbal Behavior

Although women’s advantage in accurately reading nonverbal cues appears to be general, J. A. Hall and Gunnery (2013) have questioned whether this advantage holds across all attributions. Most studies on decoding accuracy typically ask participants to draw inferences about a target’s emotional state, which is a domain in which women are socialized to have more interest than men and likely to develop a higher level of expertise (Brody, 1999). Thus, decoding accuracy is one area where contextualizing gender might prove fruitful. For example, research is needed to evaluate decoding accuracy in domains in which men’s decoding accuracy might not differ from women’s or, perhaps, might even be superior, such as accurately detecting the intentions of a rival from his nonverbal behavior during competitive or combative interactions. Some evidence for such an effect comes from research showing that men’s recall accuracy for nonverbal behavior increases in competitive versus noncompetitive contexts (J. A. Hall & Schmid Mast, 2008). Interestingly, research on flirting behavior indicates that both males and females are better at decoding the sexual interest of men than women (Place, Todd, Penke, & Asendorpf, 2009). Thus, the contextual cues surrounding nonverbal behaviors (and their distinct self-relevance for men and women) likely impact the size of the gender difference in decoding accuracy.

Smiling Considerable research has examined gender differences in smiling in part inspired by the speculation that women’s greater smiling reflects their low power relative to men (Henley, 1977). For reviews of that literature, see J. A. Hall, Carney, and Murphy (2002) as well as M. LaFrance et al. (2003). Women are found to generally smile more than men (r = .20 in M. LaFrance et al.’s, 2003, meta-analysis of 418 studies). However, this effect increased or decreased in response to a number of factors. For example, age plays a key role, such that gender differences in smiling tend to be absent among young children, largest among adolescents, and smaller, though still present, in adults, and all but disappearing after late middle age. The meta-analysis by M. LaFrance et al. (2003) found the largest gender effect (r = .28) among adolescents who were 13–17 years of age; among older

participants, the magnitude of the gender difference decreased steadily, and it was lowest (r = .06) among older adults who were 65 years of age or older. Similarly, J. A. Hall’s (1984) meta-analysis as well as more recent studies (e.g., DeSantis, Mohan, & Steinhorst, 2005; Dodd, Russell, & Jenkins, 1999; Else-Quest, Hyde, Goldsmith, & Van Hulle, 2006; Wondergem & Friedlmeier, 2012) have found no gender differences in the social smiling of young children. The social context in which smiling occurs has also been found to substantially affect the size of the sex difference (M. LaFrance et al., 2003). Women smile more than men when the situation involves social engagement, and this is particularly evident when the context is marked by social tension. Accordingly, women’s tendency to smile more than men is higher when they are being observed by others, when they are instructed to get acquainted, when they engage in self-disclosure, and when they experience embarrassment (M. LaFrance et al., 2003). These situations make communality more salient, which heightens the expectation for more feminine behavior. Of note, the size of the difference is smaller or absent in situations where males and females are engaged in the same task or occupy the same social role. Psychological gender has also been found to affect the size of the sex difference in smiling. For example, M. LaFrance and Carmen (1980) categorized male and female participants according to their sex-role orientation (i.e., feminine sex-typed, masculine sex-typed, and androgynous; Bem, 1977), and they observed their nonverbal behavior. In this study, as expected, a main effect of biological gender emerged, such that women smiled more than men. However, androgynous men and women did not differ in their smiling; rather, the effect was driven by feminine women and masculine men, in which the former smiled significantly more than the latter (M. LaFrance & Carmen, 1980). Although for many specific nonverbal behaviors there is a dearth of cross-cultural examination of gender differences, this is not the case with smiling. Studies have examined the sex differences in smiling across nations and within countries (M. LaFrance et al., 2003). Moreover, the size of this difference varies 145

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considerably, with the largest difference reported with Canadian samples (r = .30), and the smallest difference emerging in British nationals (r = .07). Ethnicity also plays a role in U.S. samples, with Caucasians exhibiting larger differences (r = .22) than African Americans (r = .13; M. LaFrance et al., 2003).

Remaining Questions Whether sexual orientation might moderate the effect of biological sex on smiling in a similar way as sex-role orientation has shown to do (M. LaFrance & Carmen, 1980) remains an empirical question. It is possible that gay men might smile significantly more than heterosexual men, whereas lesbian women might smile less than heterosexual women. There certainly exist stereotypes about this, yet to date no research has examined this proposition empirically.

Gazing and Eye Contact In infancy, girls gaze at social stimuli more than boys (Connellan, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Batki, & Ahluwalia, 2000; Lutchmaya & Baron-Cohen, 2002), a pattern that is evident as well with older children and adults (J. A. Hall, 1984). The consistent finding is that adult women gaze at their interaction partners more than men do. In fact, the sex difference in gazing is even larger among adults (r = .32 in adult men and women; J. A. Hall, 1984) than it is among infants and children, (r = .20 and r = .19, respectively). It is worth noting that these patterns are most pronounced when the measure of gazing involves duration rather than the number of individual looks at another person (J. A. Hall, 1984). In fact, some investigators have reported the opposite effect when the measure involves frequency of glances. In short, men’s gaze patterns are such that they look more frequently but for brief durations at their interaction partners than women do (see, e.g., Bente, Donaghy, & Suwelack, 1998). Gender differences in gazing are also sensitive to sex composition of the interacting pair, such that the largest sex difference in gazing favoring females is observed when the comparison entails contrasting female–female with male–male dyads (r = .45; J. A. Hall, 1984; Yee et al., 2007). J. A. Hall and Gunnery (2013) have suggested that this 146

is due to the contribution of both interactants. In addition to women gazing at their dyadic partners more than men, research shows that women are gazed at by others more than men are (r = .31 based on six studies in J. A. Hall’s, 1984, meta-analysis). Thus, because women tend to gaze more, and because individuals tend to gaze at women more, female–female dyads exhibit more eye gazing behavior than cross-sex or male–male dyads. Although J. A. Hall and Gunnery (2013) have suggested that men are somewhat uncomfortable with eye-to-eye contact, they sometimes appear very comfortable staring down others when they are talking but look at others little when they are listening. Dovidio, Ellyson, Keating, Heltman, and Brown (1988) have shown, for example, that men exhibit a pattern called high-visual dominance: They gaze more at their interaction partners while speaking than while listening. This is especially true of men in high-power positions. Women, in contrast, tend to do the opposite: They gaze at their partners more while they are listening than when they are speaking. Again, we see the effect of context. Both sexes sometimes show visual dominance when they are in high-power roles (Ellyson, Dovidio, & Brown, 1992). As with smiling, femininity and masculinity have been shown to moderate gender differences in gazing. In the study described earlier, M. LaFrance and Carmen (1980) looked at gazing behavior and found that androgynous men and women did not differ significantly from each other in gaze extent, but androgynous males gazed more than masculine males, and androgynous females gazed less than feminine females.

Remaining Questions It has been theorized that eye gaze is used in the gay and lesbian community for purposes of identity recognition (Nicholas, 2004), which attests to the possibility that gaze may add a function for gay men and lesbians that is not utilized by heterosexual men and women. Indeed, one study has demonstrated that eye-contact plays an important role for lesbians and gay men in identifying one another (Carroll & Gilroy, 2002). However, to date no research has systematically evaluated whether

Gender and Nonverbal Behavior

sexual orientation moderates gender differences in duration and/or frequency of gazing behavior more generally. Finally, the degree of cross-cultural moderation of gender differences in gazing behavior is unknown. In East Asian cultures, for example, eye contact is often construed as impolite, whereas averted eye gaze is seen as respectful (Knapp & Hall, 2010). Whether stringent norms about gazing lead to smaller (or even reversed) gender differences in gazing behavior in Eastern versus Western cultures is an empirical question.

Touch Who touches whom, in what ways, how much, and with what repercussions has been the subject of empirical scrutiny for more than 40 years starting with Henley’s (1977) proposal that high-status people have greater license to touch a low-status person than the reverse. She reported that men touch women more than women initiate touch with men and saw this asymmetry as reflecting status differences. J. A. Hall’s analyses have led her to conclude, however, that the reverse pattern is more reliable. Compared to men, J. A. Hall (1984, 2011) has reported that women generally touch others more than men do. Subsequent efforts have attempted to specify the factors that might explain these discrepant patterns. Major, Schmidlin, and Williams (1990) posed that several factors could potentially account for the results. For example, age matters. For dyads younger than 30 years of age, male-initiated touch dominates, but the opposite (more female-initiated touch) is observed for dyads older than 30 years of age (J. A. Hall & Veccia, 1990; Willis & Briggs, 1992; Willis & Dodds, 1998). The nature of the relationship also counts. Males appear to initiate touch more than females when the relationship is a nonintimate one and the setting is public. Among married couples in contrast, wives touch husbands more than the other way around (Smith, Vogel, Madon, & Edwards, 2011). Consistent with this, unmarried men are more comfortable with touch than unmarried women, whereas the reverse is true for married men and women (Hanzal, Segrin, & Dorros, 2008).

The sex composition of the relevant dyad also impacts which person touches which other person. Like gazing, male–male and female–female dyads differ most in interpersonal touching, such that female–female dyads exhibit the highest levels of interpersonal touch and male–male dyads the lowest (Kneidinger et al., 2001; Montemayor & Flannery, 1989; Stier & Hall, 1984). Women report feeling more comfortable than men with same-sex touch (Andersen & Leibowitz, 1978; Roese, Olson, Borenstein, Martin, & Shores, 1992) but less comfortable with touch from strangers (Heslin, Nguyen, & Nguyen, 1983). Clearly, the meaning of touch differs for males and females when the encounter is a heterosexual one. The more females perceive touch as sexual, the less they perceive it as warm and friendly, whereas the more males perceive touch as sexual, the more they perceive it as warm and pleasant (Nguyen, Heslin, & Nguyen, 1975). In a set of studies with college students, Roese et al. (1992) examined attitudes toward sexual minorities and same-sex touch, and they demonstrated that self-reported homophobia and discomfort with same-sex touch were correlated among male and female students. Moreover, the researchers covertly observed and recorded frequency of touch in same-sex dyads of students interacting in a cafeteria, and they later approached the dyads and asked them to complete a scale on homophobic attitudes. Homophobic attitudes were negatively correlated with frequency of same-sex touch for all participants. Male participants, in particular, had stronger homophobic attitudes than women, and they exhibited lower frequencies of touch (Roese et al., 1992). In another study, participants were asked to evaluate touching versus nontouching line drawings showing same- and cross-sex dyads, and the effect of participant sexual orientation on evaluations was examined (Derlega et al., 2001). Heterosexual participants (but not gay, lesbian, or bisexual men and women) rated touch in male–male dyads as less appropriate than touch among cross-sex or female–female dyads. Heterosexual participants also tended to infer higher levels of sexual involvement in touching versus nontouching drawings depicting cross-sex or male–male pairs compared to nonheterosexual participants (but no effect emerged for female–female pairs). 147

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Taken together, these findings suggest high vigilance on the part of heterosexual men and women to same-sex touch, particularly with regard to male–male touch, likely stemming from negative attitudes toward homosexuality and sexual minorities (Roese et al., 1992) as well as from an increased tendency to perceive such touch as sexual (Derlega et al., 2001). There is, however, the noted exception to proscriptions against male–male touch, specifically in settings involving competitive sports. There, male–male touch is less inhibited and is more likely to emerge compared to other settings (although even in this context, male–male touch is less frequent than female–female touch; Kneidinger et al., 2001). One reason for this might be that the unambiguous nature of the sports setting might counter the tendency to perceive male–male touch as sexual (Derlega et al., 2001), thus deeming it more acceptable to heterosexual perceivers. Gender differences in touch also depend on the type and quality of touch examined. Research has shown that men tend to touch more intimately and for longer durations than women (McCormick & Jones, 1989). Also, men touch women with the hand more than women touch men with the hand, but for nonhand touches, women touch more than men (DiBiase & Gunnoe, 2004; J. A. Hall & Veccia, 1990). Interestingly, type of touch seems to interact with relationship status, such that effects emerge for men and women who are not in a relationship; but for married couples, women touch men more than the other way around, regardless of the type of touch examined (i.e., expressive and supportive touches; hand and nonhand touches; Smith et al., 2011). Research has also identified differences in the accuracy or effectiveness with which men and women use touch to communicate with others. Among unacquainted participants, regardless of the gender of their interaction partner, women are more likely than men to successfully communicate sympathy using touch, whereas men are more likely than women to successfully use touch to communicate anger (Hertenstein & Keltner, 2011). This research also found that happiness tended to be successfully conveyed by touch in female–female dyads only (Hertenstein & Keltner, 2011). 148

In addition to interpersonal touch, research has examined gender differences in self-touch, which some regard as indicating self-consciousness. Compared to men, women touch themselves more (r = .22; J. A. Hall, 1984; McCormick & Jones, 1989). Gender differences in self-touch have been examined particularly in the context of cross-sex flirting interactions. This research has typically found that women tend to self-touch during the initial stages of flirting, before contact is initiated, more so than men (Moore, 1995; Scheflen, 1965).

Remaining Questions Cross-cultural research on gender differences in touch has yet to receive the attention it deserves. One study focusing on men and women’s attitudes toward same-sex touch found that women were more comfortable with this kind of touch in the United States as well as in Malaysia, Spain, and Chile (Willis & Rawdon, 1994). More than 50 years ago, anthropologist Edward Hall (1959) proposed that cultures varied in the degree to which they were oriented toward physical contact or not. For example, he noted that Southern European and Middle Eastern peoples preferred close interpersonal distances and more touching than people living in more northern climes. Nonetheless, no data currently exist on the degree to which gender might interact with these cultural patterns. Many of the moderators that have shown to be important for other nonverbal behaviors (e.g., smiling) have not been systematically explored with respect to touch—such as the presence of observers. Also, whether sex-role orientation might interact with biological sex to determine touch behavior is not known. It could be the case that qualitative differences in the meaning of touch would emerge, such that masculine men might use touch most successfully and most often to communicate anger or dominance (as has been shown recently; Hertenstein & Keltner, 2011), whereas androgynous men might use touch to express a wider variety of emotions—such as sympathy. Similarly, whereas some research has explored how attitudes toward sexual minorities influence attitudes toward same-sex touch, an understanding of how sexual orientation interacts with actual

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touch behavior is lacking. Because the existing research suggests a high degree of vigilance on the part of heterosexual men with respect to same-sex touch, it might be expected that same-sex dyads among gay men would touch significantly more than male–male dyads among heterosexual men. For women, it is less clear that sexual orientation would interact with gender to influence touch behavior, but this is an empirical question.

Interpersonal Distance, Body Orientation, Gesture, and Posture Compared to women, men tend to adopt larger interpersonal distances with interaction partners (r = .27; 17 studies in J. A. Hall’s, 1984, metaanalysis). Not surprisingly, interpersonal distance is at its maximum in male–male dyads compared to female–female or mixed sex dyads. This has been shown cross-culturally both in the United States and Turkey (Ozdemir, 2008). Looked at from another angle, J. A. Hall’s (1984) meta-analysis reported that people tend to set larger interpersonal distances when interacting with men than with women (r = .43; nine studies). This was true of both adult participants as well as children, although relatively few studies have examined interpersonal distance in children (J. A. Hall & Gunnery, 2013). With respect to body orientation, female adults as well as children tend to orient more directly toward their interaction partners than males, although this effect is smaller than other gender differences in nonverbal communication (r = .15 and r = .12, respectively; J. A. Hall, 1984). Moreover, in the specific context of heterosexual flirtation, this gender difference in body orientation disappears, as both men and women orient their bodies toward the person of interest (Fichten et al., 1992). Some research has also found gender differences in body synchrony or posture mirroring—the spontaneous postural matching of interaction partners, which is believed to convey interpersonal rapport (Scheflen, 1964). M. LaFrance and Ickes (1981) examined the interaction between gender and sex-role orientation on body mirroring. They found that in same-sex dyads, feminine (i.e., sex-typed) females engaged in significantly more body mirroring than samesex dyads of masculine males. However, among

androgynous pairs, the effect was reversed with male–male dyads showing more body mirroring than female–female dyads. With respect to small body movements, results indicate that men tend to be reliably more fidgety and restless than women (r = .34). However, women engage in more head nodding when interacting with others, a behavior sometimes referred to as a back-channel response, such as uttering “hmm” in reaction to a speaker’s statement. Back-channel responses are used to convey that one is actively listening to an interaction partner. Women have also been found to use hand movements and gestures while speaking more so than men (r = .28; J. A. Hall, 1984). Like body orientation, women have been found to lean forward toward their interaction partner more than men (r = .16; J. A. Hall, 1984; HelwegLarsen, Cunningham, Carrico, & Pergram, 2004). Posture has also been described on an expansivecompacted dimension, and here men tend to adopt more relaxed postures (i.e., asymmetrically arranged arms and legs; r = .33) as well as more expansive body postures (i.e., limbs reaching farther away from the body; r = .46; J. A. Hall, 1984), whereas women, in contrast, typically maintain more restricted postures with legs close together and arms close to the torso. For example, observations of seated participants on an urban metro revealed that men more often sat in an open posture with their legs apart and their arms away from their sides while women sat in closed postures, that is with upper legs against each other and arms against the trunk (Vrugt & Luyerink, 2000). This sex difference in posture expansiveness has been linked with differences in dominance and social power. Body openness in adults is positively related to dominance (J. A. Hall, Coats, & LeBeau, 2005), and research on children reveals that one of the key differences between dominant and submissive individuals is body expansiveness (Weisfeld & Beresford, 1982). With regard to adults, research has also found that expansive postures cause power-related feelings (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003) and behavior as well as changes in hormone levels normally associated with high rank (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010). 149

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Remaining Questions As is the case with same-sex touch behavior, an understanding of how sexual orientation moderates gender differences in interpersonal distance and orientation as well body movement and posture is sorely lacking. Homophobic attitudes or greater vigilance to potential threat by heterosexual men may play a role in men’s preference for greater interpersonal distance in same-sex dyads compared to women. Future research might examine interpersonal distance by varying dyadic composition and sexual orientation. It is plausible that interpersonal distance might be significantly reduced in male–male dyads of gay compared to heterosexual men. Similarly, research looking at hand gesturing during speech and expressive body movements might benefit from evaluating how sexual orientation might moderate gender differences. As with smiling, there are stereotypes expecting gay men to engage in more sociability, often expressed in more hand movements while talking compared to heterosexual men (Webbink, 1981), but whether this is truly the case remains to be examined empirically. As the findings by M. LaFrance and Ickes (1981) suggest, femininity and masculinity might be better predictors of some of the gender differences discussed in this section than biological sex. For example, maintaining a compressed, upright body posture may be part of enacting femininity scripts, and thus androgynous women might be expected to display less restricted and more relaxed body postures compared to feminine-typed women. Similarly, many of the behaviors shown to be more common in women than men (such as maintaining closer interpersonal distance, orienting the body toward an interaction partner, head nodding, and forward leaning) are behaviors denoting social sensibility—a stereotypically communal characteristic. Thus, individuals with higher femininity scores might exhibit these behaviors to a greater extent regardless of their gender, and androgynous men and women might fall somewhere in between sex-typed men and women. More research is needed to address these possibilities.

Vocal Nonverbal Behavior In general, men speak louder than women and with more speech disturbances, such as filled 150

pauses—“ah,” “um,” or incomplete sentences (J. A. Hall, 1984; Schmid Mast & Sczesny, 2010). Research has also shown that men tend to be more talkative than women (Leaper & Ayres, 2007), although recent findings suggest that this tendency might be moderated by men’s situational sense of power (Brescoll, 2011). In other words, men’s tendency to surpass women in talking time (i.e., volubility) tends to disappear when men are experimentally induced into a low-power mindset. As noted, women generally exceed men in the use of back channels while listening to others (J. A. Hall, 1984; Leaper & Robnett, 2011). In contrast, men are more likely than women to interrupt others’ speech with the goal to take over the conversation, sometimes referred to as intrusive interruptions, rather than merely speaking at the same time as another person (Anderson & Leaper, 1998). Intrusive interruptions are more likely to discourage the original speaker from continuing. Thus, a relatively small gender difference when considering interruptions in general (r = .08) becomes substantially larger when considering intrusive interruptions specifically (r = .16; Anderson & Leaper, 1998). Similar to this, M. LaFrance and Carmen (1980) did not find a significant difference in interruptions by men and women when all types of interruptions were combined into a single index. However, when the researchers looked at interruptive statements (assertive) and interruptive questions (responsive) separately, clear gender differences emerged, with males making significantly more interruptive statements and women inserting more interruptive questions. The number of interaction partners has been shown to moderate the size of the gender difference in the tendency to interrupt, such that men make more intrusive interruptions than women, especially in group settings (i.e., more than two interacting partners; r = .30; Anderson & Leaper, 1998). The difference is almost negligible for dyads (r = .06). The same trend emerged when considering any kind of interruption, though the difference tended to be smaller (r = .13 in groups; r = .03 in dyads). In Anderson and Leaper’s (1998) meta-analysis, dyadic composition moderated the tendency for men to interrupt more than women, such that the largest difference emerged for intrusive interruptions

Gender and Nonverbal Behavior

occurring in mixed-gender groups or dyads (r = .30 in same-sex and r = .06 in mixed-sex groups for intrusive interruptions, and r = .01 in same-sex and r = .08 in mixed-sex groups or dyads for overall interruptions; Anderson & Leaper, 1998). Degree of familiarity between the interacting partners has been shown to moderate the likelihood that a gender difference in interruptive behavior will emerge. For intrusive interruptions, Anderson and Leaper (1998) found that gender effects were more likely when conversing with strangers (r = .19) rather than familiar persons (r = .09). Due to a limited number of studies examining intrusive interruptions among familiar persons, Anderson and Leaper were not able to examine different types of relationships (e.g., friends vs. romantic partners). For overall interruptions, however, they were able to compare friends, romantic partners, and other types of close relationships. They found the largest (albeit, relatively small) gender difference among romantic partners (r = .10). Interestingly, among friends, the difference between men and women’s overall interruptive behavior had the opposite direction, with women interrupting their friends more than men did but only very slightly so (r = .07). Among other close relationship partners as well as among strangers, the pattern of gender differences for overall interruptions mirrored that for intrusive interruptions, although they were smaller in magnitude (r = .06 and r = .08, respectively). Finally, M. LaFrance and Carmen (1980) examined the interaction between psychological gender orientation and biological gender on two kinds of vocal behavior. Specifically, they looked at interruptions and filled pauses in both task-focused and emotionally expressive contexts. In general, masculine males emitted significantly more filled pauses than androgynous males and feminine females. Interruptive statements were significantly more common among androgynous men and women compared to sex-typed men and women (i.e., masculine males and feminine females). Importantly, context moderated these interactions, such that masculine males and androgynous females emitted more interruptive statements in the task condition than in the emotive condition, whereas sex-typed females made few interruptive statements in both contexts, and

androgynous males maintained a relatively high level of interrupting in both contexts. Thus, this research illuminates how biological gender, psychological gender, and gendered aspects of the specific context interact to determine nonverbal behavior in ways that would not be evident if all three factors had been examined separately.

Remaining Questions Whether the gender differences in vocal nonverbal behavior summarized here would emerge crossculturally is for future research to determine. Politeness rules, the importance assigned to hierarchy or verticality within a specific culture, and level of gender equality all may exacerbate or ameliorate men’s tendency to talk more and interrupt more than women. Similarly, whether these differences remain somewhat stable throughout the life span or fluctuate with age remains to be examined. The impact of power and status on gender differences in nonverbal behavior also needs to be evaluated more thoroughly. To date, there is limited experimental evidence that power increases men’s but not women’s talking time (Brescoll, 2011). Whether power and status may moderate other gender differences in vocal nonverbal behavior—such as the use of back-channel responses, interruptive statements and questions, and filled pauses, and so forth—is a more open question. Men might curtail their interruptive behavior and speech time when interacting with a woman who holds greater power (i.e., she is perceived to have more expertise in a specific domain). For example, male patients interacting with female physicians may not engage in the same type of vocal nonverbal behavior that is generally found when looking at other types of interaction contexts.

Other Nonverbal Domains There are three remaining nonverbal domains that, for whatever reason, have not been as central to the study of nonverbal communication in general and gender aspects in particular as the domains we have covered thus far. The three domains are gait or global movement style, blushing, and crying. Because few studies have been designed to look at the ways these behaviors may differ in men and women, no meta-analyses are available for us to draw from at this point. 151

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Gait or walking style, however, differs in men and women (Kerrigan, Todd, & Croce, 1998; Nigg, Fisher, & Ronsky, 1994; Troje, 2002), and perceivers can identify the gender of a walker with minimal cues with above chance accuracy (Brooks et al., 2008; Pollick, Kay, Heim, & Stringer, 2005). Swaying hips are perceived to be more likely characteristic of walking by females, whereas swaggering shoulders are perceived to be more likely displayed by men, and it is these perceptions that aid in the inference of the gender of a walking target (Johnson & Tassinary, 2005). Additionally, recent research suggests that the walking styles of gay men and lesbian women differ from that of heterosexuals in degree of shoulder swagger (a male-typical behavior) and hip sway (a femaletypical behavior; see Johnson, Gill, Reichman, & Tassinary, 2007). Beyond replicating these basic effects, more research is needed in this area to understand how individual characteristics such as age and race may moderate gender differences in walking style. Moreover, in keeping with our theme of deconstructing gender, we recommend that future research examine whether gender differences in walking style are moderated by psychological gender. For example, do the walking styles of androgynous men and androgynous women differ as much as those of sex-typed men and sex-typed women? Likewise, do different contexts inhibit or magnify the differences between males and females in walking style? Next, we turn our attention to research on blushing. The blush is most commonly caused by unwanted social attention (Leary, Britt, Cutlip, & Templeton, 1992), and it generally emerges as a reaction to situations that elicit “self-conscious” emotions, such as embarrassment, guilt, and shame. Women are thought to be more susceptible to blushing than men, but experimental research has not been consistent on this count (Drummond, 2013). For example, Shearn, Spellman, Straley, Meirick, and Stryker (1999) found no significant difference in the blushing reactions of men and women in an experiment in which they watched video clips of their friends or strangers or themselves singing (the last situation frequently used to trigger blushing responses). However, some self-report studies have found that women report blushing more than men report doing so (Bögels, Alberts, & de Jong, 1996; Neto, 1996) 152

There is also some evidence that females show more “coyness blushing” in a courting context (von Hooff, 2013), but again empirical verification has been slight. Future research examining actual blushing reactions as well as self-reported blushing propensity across different life stages might reveal interesting findings. For example, as is the case with smiling, it is possible that gender differences in blushing might vary with age, being slim in childhood, largest in adolescence, and relatively less pronounced in adulthood. In closing, we turn to crying, where research on gender differences has been relatively more extensive than that for either gait or blushing. To begin with, there is abundant data attesting to the ubiquitous stereotype of the tearful woman versus the stoic man (Vingerhoets, 2013). Furthermore, studies focusing on the relationship between biological gender and actual weeping show that women cry more frequently than men do (for reviews, see Bekker & Vingerhoets, 1999, 2001; Vingerhoets & Scheirs, 2000). This sex difference is consistent across several cultures where it has been studied, even though the magnitude of the difference varies with the particular culture being observed (Becht, Poortinga, & Vingerhoets, 2001). With respect to babies and young children, however, the results are mixed as to whether a sex difference exists in the first years of life (Vingerhoets, 2013). In fact, some data suggest that boys show a higher frequency of crying than girls and that it is not until 8 years of age that girls show the pattern of more crying than boys. Just why this divergence happens has been the subject of considerable debate, with some contending that boys are discouraged from crying after childhood, and others arguing that girls develop tearful crying because of its benefits (Vingerhoets, 2013).

Gender, Nonverbal Behavior, and Flirtation Heterosexual courtship interactions in Western culture involve a complex set of nonverbal behaviors by both sexes that are tightly and relationally scripted. Both sexes use nonverbal cues to signal sexual interest to potential romantic or sexual partners, and both engage in decoding practices to try to read the nonverbal cues that potentially signal the interest of another person. The whole nonverbal repertoire

Gender and Nonverbal Behavior

is used in flirtation–gaze, smile facial expression, interpersonal distance, body orientation and posture, gestures, and touch. Depending on timing and sequence, nonverbal cues can communicate awareness, openness, and desire (or their opposites). As such, the critical dimension in flirtation situations is not so much how much a nonverbal behavior is displayed but that it is displayed and shown in close temporal proximity to other cues. Although the stereotype of heterosexual flirtation often suggests that the male is the one to initiate interaction, nonverbal researchers contend that women perform the early nonverbal signaling (Grammer, Kruck, Juette, & Fink, 2000). Females have been characterized as “selectors” who attract attention by displaying openness to interaction via laughing, head tossing, grooming behaviors, selftouching or caressing objects, and bodily keeping time to music (Guéguen, 2008; Scheflen, 1965). In particular, researchers have identified women’s coy smiles (half a smile accompanied by either downward facing eyes or darting eye contact) as especially flirtatious (Moore, 1995). Men, in turn, are more likely than women to actively approach a woman in response to her nonverbal cues (Grammer et al., 2000). In short, a successful flirtation is marked by a coordinated and reciprocated sequence of each party’s nonverbal behavior with that of the other. The consensus then is that women are more active in their use of nonverbal cues to communicate romantic interest to men in the first stages of flirting rather than the other way around (Moore, 2010). However, the displayed nonverbal behaviors are more likely to be subtle so that, if necessary, both parties can subsequently deny that that there was ever any communication of interest. In fact this female subtlety is so understated or ambiguous at times that researchers find that both males and females are more accurate at deciphering when a man is being flirtatious than when a woman is (Grammer et al., 2000; Place et al., 2009). Fewer studies have focused on men’s nonverbal behavior in a flirting context (J. A. Hall & Gunnery, 2013). Renninger, Wade, and Grammer (2004) found that men who engage in brief, darting eye contact, as well as moving among locations frequently, touching other men (without being touched

in return), and exhibiting expansive body postures, were more likely to make contact with a flirting female than men who engaged in fewer of these nonverbal behaviors. Thus, whereas the nonverbal behavior of women conveys interest in a subtle way in a heterosexual situation, reflecting the belief that women are more receptive than they are active parties in a courtship, the nonverbal behavior of men signals assertiveness, in accord with scripts prescribing that men take a more active role in courtship. However, behaviors by both sexes are necessary for the interaction to be a successful one. Once contact is established between flirting partners, men and women tend to differ in the way they use touch to communicate interest and to escalate the interaction. Women continue to selftouch more than men do, and they also touch their partner in brief and casual ways that are perceived to communicate playfulness and affection (McCormick & Jones, 1989). Men, in contrast, tend to touch more intimately and for longer durations, and their touches are perceived as more strongly sexual (McCormick & Jones, 1989).

Remaining Questions Future research needs to examine how flirting behavior is managed among gay and lesbian couples. It is also likely that psychological gender (i.e., masculinity/femininity) affects flirting behavior. More feminine heterosexual women might employ the subtlest nonverbal cues to signal interest to potential partners, whereas more androgynous women might take a relatively more direct approach. Similarly, more feminine lesbian women might favor flirting behaviors different from those preferred by more androgynous lesbians. For gay men, it is possible that flirting behavior might involve less subtle cues and a more direct approach, especially in safe contexts where gay identification is assumed (e.g., gay nightclubs). Clearly, the situation will dictate which scripts are more likely. CONCLUSIONS Viewed through a gender lens, a review of the nonverbal communication literature shows that gender matters, although neither simply nor robustly. 153

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The research literature on encoding and decoding accuracy, smiling and gazing, touch and body orientation, posture and gesture, gait, blushing, and weeping shows that gender is moderately implicated when predictions are made about the frequency of various nonverbal behaviors. Nonetheless, gender needs to be considered as a multidimensional construct rather than a stand-in for simple sex differences. For one thing, psychological gender may be more critical than biological gender. In other words, nonverbal behaviors may often be telltale indicators of femininity and masculinity rather than manifestations of biological femaleness and maleness. The critical issue may thus be the degree to which any male or female personally subscribes to societal definitions of masculinity and femininity. In some cases, psychological gender dovetails with biological gender. Such would occur when a biological male or biological female strongly identifies with the tenets of masculinity and femininity, respectively. The confluence of sex and gender might be mistakenly taken as evidence of biological gender effects when the pivotal factor is actually consistency between psychological gender and biological gender. To the degree to which individuals do not strongly identify with societal gender norms, then we would expect less clear nonverbal differentiation between the sexes in one or more nonverbal behaviors. Another aspect of the multidimensional nature of gender is the recognition that demands to behave in a gendered way are themselves variable. Sometimes gender differences are manifestly evident because the current situation induces participants to respond with gender-differentiated behavior. At other times, between-gender group differences may be minimal. This does not mean that the result nonverbal behavior is a random fluctuation—now you see it, now you do not—but rather that aspects of the situation make gender salient or negligible or somewhere in between. In the first case, we expect gender differences to be magnified; in the second case, factors other than gender affect the amount of observed nonverbal behavior, and subject gender recedes as an influential factor. 154

As a number of researchers have noted, not only is the impact of gender highly variable across situations but also that individuals are themselves highly variable in terms of their sensitivity to gender demands (Deaux & Major, 1987). This has the effect of producing substantial within-sex variation in nonverbal display. Depending on the circumstances, this means that within-gender variation may exceed betweengender variation, causing sex differences at the group level to be minimal. At other times, gender demands may be so salient that a substantial proportion of women and men comply with what they know to be the default patterns of gendered nonverbal behavior. As Table 6.1 reveals, gender seldom operates alone in affecting the amount of observed nonverbal behavior in women and men. Take smiling for example. The data do show that women smile more on average than men. However, the data also indicate that the size of this effect covaries with a number of factors. Age is one of these moderators. Adolescents and young adults show a clear gender pattern, with females out-smiling males; however, among middle-age and older adults, this sex difference all but disappears. In similar fashion, the presence of social tension magnifies the gender difference in smiling. Women smile more than men when the atmosphere is tense, but that difference is significantly reduced when the atmosphere is relaxed. In short, individual differences and situational variations affect the degree to which gender differences in nonverbal behaviors are found. One goal of the present review was to determine whether women and men differ in their nonverbal behavior. We looked for the presence and degree of a gender difference across a range of nonverbal behaviors and found a number of modest to moderate effects. However, another goal of the present review was to consider whether a series of variables might help explain when such differences appear and recede. Here, there was substantial evidence that gender-marked nonverbal cues, far from being fixed and stable, are malleable and flexible, responsive to even small changes in the social and psychological environment.

Gender and Nonverbal Behavior

TABLE 6.1 Gender Differences in Nonverbal Behavior Nonverbal behavior/domain

Gender difference

Encoding accuracy Decoding accuracy

W>M W>M

Smiling

W>M

Gaze (general) Visual dominancea Other-touch

WM WM W>M WM W>M W>M WM W

(Apa Handbooks in Psychology) David Ricky Matsumoto, Hyi Sung Hwang, Mark G Frank-APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication-American Psychological Association (2015) - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2024)

References