In the last byte, we looked at kinesics. In today's byte, we look at facial and eye behavior.
In most face-to-face communication we find a wealth of information coming from the facial expressional and the eye behavior. It is a rich source of nonverbal communication. Many a times, the face gives unintended clues that to emotions that sender is trying to hide.
It would be interesting to know that smiles have a universal meaning! While frowns, raised eyebrows and wrinkled foreheads would need to be interpreted in conjunction with the person (actor), the situation and the culture.
Eye contact enhances reflective listening and along with smiling - it indicates a positive emotion. But again the cultural context begins to play a major role here - in some countries the direct gaze could be interpreted as honest, truthful and forthright in the US context, but could mean completely differ in the Arabic world! (It could be interpreted as serious offence to look directly at a woman). In Asian cultures, it is considered good behavior to bow the head in deference to a supervisor than look at his/her eyes directly.
In most face-to-face communication we find a wealth of information coming from the facial expressional and the eye behavior. It is a rich source of nonverbal communication. Many a times, the face gives unintended clues that to emotions that sender is trying to hide.
It would be interesting to know that smiles have a universal meaning! While frowns, raised eyebrows and wrinkled foreheads would need to be interpreted in conjunction with the person (actor), the situation and the culture.
Eye contact enhances reflective listening and along with smiling - it indicates a positive emotion. But again the cultural context begins to play a major role here - in some countries the direct gaze could be interpreted as honest, truthful and forthright in the US context, but could mean completely differ in the Arabic world! (It could be interpreted as serious offence to look directly at a woman). In Asian cultures, it is considered good behavior to bow the head in deference to a supervisor than look at his/her eyes directly.
No comments:
Post a Comment