I can easily say that I have been wrong about someone’s nonverbal communication. When I thought that the nonverbal movement of her eyebrow movement meant something negative, I took offense to it. It turned out that the eyebrow movement from her was meant to be sarcasm and not harm. Unfortunately sarcasm can make up for a negative reading of others nonverbal communication. I believe that the person giving the nonverbal cue could make it easier understood by adding verbal communication to the mix. As for the people receiving the nonverbal, the only change I could come up with would be to analyze it before you assume the meaning behind it. That could help increase the accuracy of the message you take from the nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is a substitute for verbal communication and because of that we can easily mistake what the message actually is. I’m sure there are other ways to increase the accuracy of nonverbal communication, but I believe it has to come from both sides of the conversation.
I completely agree with you that nonverbal communication accuracy has to be met at both sides, the receiving and the sending. I think that adding verbal with nonverbal messages on the sending end could be helpful, especially if someone is trying to communicate. It could also be useful if a receiver is unsure of a nonverbal message that they communicate verbally. But because this is not always the case there will likely proceed to be miscommunications (verbal and nonverbal). It is interesting to think since reading this chapter in our communication text that if you do misinterpret somebody's body language or facial expression you can sum it up as a miscommunication.
ReplyDeleteI found it difficult to come up with a way that someone could improve their interpretation of nonverbal messages as well, since it comes from both sides. If someone is communicating unclearly, I think the best thing to do would be to either ask for clarification (perception checking) or if that is not possible, analyze a few different possible meanings, which is another part of perception checking except without asking the person for clarification. If someone is cross with you, you can instead of immediately assuming error on your part, consider if perhaps they are having a bad day, might be angry at something other than you, etc.
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