Nonverbal Communication

Agenda

• Nonverbal communication speaks
• What makes up an emotion?
• Influences on emotional expression
• Expressing emotions

Agenda

• Guidelines for expressing emotions
• Managing emotions
• Self-talk and fallacies
• Minimizing debilitative emotions
• Maximizing facilitative emotions

Nonverbal Communication Speaks

• Nonverbal communication refers to the messages expressed by nonlinguistic means.

Nonverbal Communication Speaks

• Theory of communicating credibility finds breakdown to be 55% (body language) - 38% (tone) - 7% (words spoken)

Nonverbal Communication Speaks

• All nonverbal behavior communicates information
• It conveys emotions that we may be unwilling or unable to express, or ones we are unaware of

What Makes Up An Emotion?

• Physiological: we experience emotions through the body

What Makes Up An Emotion?

• Nonverbal reactions: your "gut" reaction can be visible through changes to your appearance

What Makes Up An Emotion?

• Cognitive interpretations: how we label the feelings we experience
• Reappraisal: rethinking the meaning of emotionally charged events in ways that alter their emotional impact

What Makes Up An Emotion?

• Verbal expression: words can help us clearly define what we feel

Influences on Emotional Expression

• Personality
• Culture
• Social role and convention
• Emotional contagion

Discuss

• Initial reactions?
• What do you think about the "fake it til' you make it" approach?
• What about "fake it til' you become it?"

Expressing Emotions

• Emotion coaching gives children skills for communicating about feelings in later life that lead to more satisfying relationships
• Emotion dismissing is disregarding or not acknowledging children's emotions

Guidelines for Expressing Emotions

• Use a rich emotional vocabulary of specific descriptors, metaphors, desires, circumstances, and complex feelings

Guidelines for Expressing Emotions

• Differentiate between feelings and action
• Accept responsibility
• Be mindful of place and time
• Write it out

Managing Emotions

• Facilitative emotions contribute to effective functioning
• Debilitative emotions hinder or prevent effective performance

Managing Emotions

• Debiltative emotions are intense and enduring

Managing Emotions

• Self-talk occurs when you "talk yourself" into believing fallacies that lead to illogical conclusions, and in turn, debilitative feelings.
• We are usually unaware of self-talk.

Managing Emotions

• Fallacy of perfection
• Fallacy of approval
• Fallacy of should
• Fallacy of overgeneralization
• Fallacy of causation
• Fallacy of helplessness
• Fallacy of catastrophic events

Managing Emotions

• What fallacies resonate with you?
• How do these fallacies "feel" in your body?

Minimizing Debilitative Emotions

• Recognize you are experiencing debilitative emotions
• Note the activating event
• Monitor your self-talk
• Dispute your irrational beliefs

Minimizing Debilitative Emotions

• Is it rational or irrational?
• Can you reappraise?
• What's an alternative way of thinking that is more sensible?

RAIN

• Recognize
• Acknowledge
• Inquiry
• Non-identify

Impact of Trauma

• Two brain systems are relevant for the mental processing of trauma: those dealing with emotional intensity and context.

Impact of Trauma

• Amygdala (The Smoke Detector) goes into overdrive

Impact of Trauma

• Prefrontal Cortex (The Timekeeper) collapses

Impact of Trauma

• Thalamus (The Cook) shuts down

Discuss and Share

• Are there situations in which you feel disconnected from your body?
• Are there times when you feel securely "embodied?"

Discuss and Share

• Talk about self-care. Where did it originate? How is it interpreted now?
• What does it look like to you?

Nonverbal Communication

Agenda

• Types of nonverbal communication
• Messages sent

Nonverbal Communication Speaks

• Theory of communicating credibility finds breakdown to be 55% (body language) - 38% (tone) - 7% (words spoken)

Types of Nonverbal Communication

• Kinesics: how people communicate through body language like face/eye movements, posture, and gestures
• Haptics: touch
• Paralanguage: how we use vocal rate, pronunciation, pitch, tone, volume, and emphasis to give messages meaning

Types of Nonverbal Communication

• Proxemics: how communication is affected by the use, organization, and perceptions of space and distance
• Territoriality: protecting the area that serves as an extension of our physical being

Types of Nonverbal Communication

• Chronemics: how people use and structure time to communicate messages
• Physical attractiveness
• Clothing
• Physical environment

Messages Sent

• Nonverbal cues create and maintain relationships
• Subtle gestures regulate interactions
• Body language shapes our ability to influence others

Messages Sent

• Nonverbal cues help to conceal and deceive
• How we act informs the impressions we make

Discuss

• Initial responses?
• How does appearance shape how people are treated on the micro, mezzo, and macro levels?

Discuss

• What do you think about Roxane Gay's tension over "taking up space" as a feminist?
• Consider the readings -- who does "mainstream feminism" include and exclude? What can acts of feminist resistance look like?

Perceiving Others

Agenda

• Making meaning
• Perception process
• Influences on perception
• Perception tendencies
• Perception checking
• Empathy

Making Meaning

• First-order realities are physically observable qualities of a situation.
• Second-order realities involve our attaching meaning to first-order realities.

Making Meaning

• Second-order realities don't exist in objects or situations but rather in our minds.

Perception Process

• Selection
• Organization
• Interpretation
• Negotiation

Selection

• We pay attention to data that are intense and repeated.

Organization

• We organize data according to four schemas, or cognitive frameworks that allow us to give order to the information we have selected.

Organization

• Physical constructs
• Role constructs/social position
• Interaction constructs
• Psychological constructs

Interpretation

• Relational satisfaction
• Expectations
• Personal experience
• Personality
• Assumptions

Negotiation

• Negotiation is the process by which communicators influence each other's perceptions through communication.
• It's an exchange of stories.

Influences on Perception

• Access to information: we can only make sense of what we know, and none of us knows everything
• Physiology: the senses, age, health and fatigue, biological cycles, and neurobehavioral factors

Influences on Perception

• Psychology: mood, social standing
• Culture
• Self-concept

Perception Tendencies

• Attribution is the process of attaching meaning to behavior. We attribute meaning to our own actions and to the actions of others, but we often use different yardsticks.
• There are several perceptual tendencies that lead to inaccurate attributions.

Perception Tendencies

• Snap judgments can be based on stereotypes, exaggerated beliefs associated with a categorizing system.

Stereotypes

• Involve categorizing others on the basis of easily recognized but not necessarily significant traits
• It ascribes a set of characteristics to most or all members of a group
• It applies the generalization to a particular person

Perception Tendencies

• First impressions
• Self-serving bias toward negative traits

Perception Tendencies

• Our own expectations about a situation shape how we experience it
• Assuming others are like us

Perception Checking

• Perception checking involves a description of the behavior you noticed, two possible interpretations of the behavior, and a request for clarification.

Perception Checking

• “Why are you mad at me?”
• “When you slammed the door, I wasn’t sure whether you were mad at me or just in a hurry. How did you feel?"

Empathy

• Empathy is the ability to recreate another person's perspective, to experience the world from his/her/their shoes.

Empathy

• Open-mindedness
• Imagination
• Commitment

Tell me about yourself

Sound and Fury

• Heather
• Peter + Nita (Heather's parents)
• Chris + Mari (Heather's aunt/uncle)
• Marianne (Grandma)

Discuss

Listening, Receiving, and Responding

Agenda

• Listening versus hearing
• Listening components
• Mindful listening
• Styles
• Responses
• Challenges
• Poor Habits

Hearing versus Listening

• Hearing is the process in which sound waves strike the eardrum and cause vibrations that are transmitted to the brain.
• Listening is the process of receiving and responding to others' messages.

Listening Components

• Hearing
• Paying attention
• Understanding: listening fidelity
• Remembering
• Responding: observable feedback

Mindful Listening

• Mindful listening involves giving careful and thoughtful attention and responses to the messages we receive.
• Mindless listening is reactive, automated, and routine.

Styles

• Task-oriented
• Relational
• Analytical
• Critical

Styles

• Task-oriented is focused on efficiency and accomplishing the job at hand.
• They can minimize emotions.

Styles

• Relational is non-judgmental and interested in understanding and supporting people.
• They can be over involved with others’ feelings and can be overly expressive or intrusive.

Styles

• Analytical focuses on attending to the full message before coming to judgment, engaging in systemic thinking.
• Their approach can be time-consuming and impractical with a deadline.

Styles

• Critical focuses on evaluating messages for accuracy and quality, investigating a problem.
• They can nitpick.

Responses

• Silent listening: nonverbal responses
• Questioning: sincere and conterfeit
• Paraphrasing
• Empathizing

Responses

• Analyzing: interpretive
• Evaluating: appraisal
• Advising

Challenges

• Information overload
• Personal concerns
• Rapid thought
• Noise: external, physiological, and psychological

Poor Habits

• Pseudolistening
• Stage hogging
• Selective listening
• Filling in the gaps

Poor Habits

• Insulated listening
• Defensive listening
• Ambushing

Communicating for Social Change Exercise

• Cultural: using communication to shape public opinion, language, and behavior
• Disruptive: using communication to make it costly - financially, politically, personally - for people to support the status quo
• Organizational: using communication to mobilize groups into political participation that advances an agenda

Resumes, Emails, and Public Speaking

Email Etiquette

• Is email the most appropriate medium?

Email Etiquette

• Short
• Simple
• Neutral
• Non-confidential
• If it doesn't meet these criteria, speak in-person or by phone

Email Etiquette

• Clear subject line
• Salutation
• Brief message: get to the point and write in a way that helps your cause
• Contact information
• Proofread
• Quotes, fonts, and other items

Email Etiquette

• Do not send while activated
• Be mindful of CC/BCC
• Be realistic about response and follow-up time

Public Speaking

• What is your hook? (Pathos)
• What verses help you tell the story? (Logos)
• Establish yourself. (Ethos)
• Be intentional about word choice and pacing.
• Ask: how do I want to make people feel after hearing this?

Public Speaking

• Organization of information: no surprises
• Command of subject matter: do not rely on notes
• Practice transitions with co-presenter

Public Speaking

• Speech speed, volume, and clarity (low, slow, and steady)
• Use of gestures, expressions, and body language

Public Speaking

• Use of visual tools
• Quality and clarity of visual tools (appearance matters)
• Participant involvement through activities or discussion
• Practice

Culture and Interpersonal Communication

Agenda

• Culture and social identity
• Intercultural communication
• Norms

Culture and Social Identity

• Culture is the language, values, beliefs, traditions, and customs people share and learn.
• Your social identity is the part of your self-concept that is based on perceived in-groups and out-groups.

Intercultural Communication

• Intercultural communication occurs when members of two or more culture exchange messages in a manner influenced by their different cultural perceptions and symbol systems, both verbal and nonverbal.

Norms

• High-context and low-context
• Individualistic and collectivist
• Power distance
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Achievement and nurturance

Culture and Interpersonal Communication

Intercultural Competence

• Humility
• Tolerance for ambiguity
• Open-mindedness (v. ethnocentrism)
• Knowledge and skills: active and passive
• Patience
• Perserverance

Stereotypes and Ethnic Myths

• Describe the myth.
• Offer a structural and historical explanation (data, policy, trends).
• Why is the myth problematic? What inequities does it perpetuate or justify?
• Why does the myth have staying power?

Dominant Culture

• How are you - in action, self-concept - embedded in and shaped by dominant culture?
• Do you question your adherence to dominant culture? How?

Dominant Culture

• How does fragility factor into dominant culture?
• Discuss how model minorities - and the explanations for their success - are related to dominant culture.
• Who is ostracized or invisible/less visible under a dominant culture viewpoint?

Communication in Close Relationships

Agenda

• Intimacy
• Communication in friendships
• Types of friendships
• Family patterns

Intimacy

• Intimacy is a feeling of closeness, bondedness, and connectedness.

Intimacy

• Emotional
• Physical
• Financial
• Intellectual

Communication in Friendships

• Friendship is a voluntary relationship that provides social support, created, managed, and maintained through communication.

Types of Friendships

• Long versus short-term
• Task (shared activities) versus maintenance (mutual liking and support)
• Low versus high disclosure
• Low versus high obligation
• Frequent versus infrequent contact

Patterns of Family Communication

• A family is a system with two or more interdependent people who have a common history and a present reality, and who expect to influence each other in the future.

Patterns of Family Communication

• Members are interdependent
• More than the sum of its parts
• Have subsystems

Patterns of Family Communication

• Narratives reflect beliefs about work, identity, and values about how to operate in the world through rules and rituals.

Patterns of Family Communication

• Consensual
• Plural
• Protective
• Laissez-faire

Patterns of Family Communication

• Conversation orientation is the degree to which families favor an open climate of discussion about a wide array of topics.
• Conformity orientation is the degree to which families stress uniformity of attitudes, values, and beliefs.

Genogram Exercise

• Draw your genogram for your family (as you define family).
• Include each person’s level of education and professional synopsis. Include degrees, activism, life experience, etc.

Exercise

• How does your family communicate?
• Are there stories or narratives you frequently tell?
• How would you characterize the climate?

Managing Conflict

Agenda

• Understanding conflict
• Conflict styles
• Which style to use
• Four horsemen
• Collaborative solutions

Understanding Conflict

• Conflict is an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals.

Understanding Conflict

• Conflict is an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals.

Understanding Conflict

• Expressed, so people acknowledge the problem exists
• Perceived to be mutually exclusive with scarce resources
• People don't recognize their interdependence

Understanding Conflict

• Conflict is inevitable.

Conflict Styles

• Avoidance
• Accommodation
• Competition
• Compromise
• Collaboration

Discuss

• Which styles do you use?
• Are there styles you feel uncomfortable using?

Which Style to Use

• Situation
• Other person
• Relationship to the other person and how much you value it
• Goals

Four Horsemen

• Criticism
• Defensiveness
• Contempt
• Stonewalling

Collaborative Resolutions

• Define your needs
• Share your needs at the right time, using "I"
• Listen to the other person
• Generate solutions without judgment
• Evaluate and choose the best solution
• Implement
• Follow-up

Constructive Discussions

• If you feel cut off, say so.
• If you feel misheard or misunderstood, ask the listener to repeat to affirm or clarify.
• If you feel uncomfortable, say so and check-in with others to decide. State your need for a break.

Constructive Discussions

• If you feel angry, express it directly instead of attacking or acting it out.
• If you feel the conversation is veering off-course, share that feeling and ask about it.

Big Assumption Exercise