Nonverbal communication is really interesting. On an everyday basis, you don't realize how often you use nonverbal codes and how much they affect verbal communication. That is, until the crazy girl doing an intercultural communication experiment changes all the nonverbal communication rules and completely freaks you out. I expected to get some sort of reaction from people when I changed my nonverbal behavior, but I didn't expect to get as strong of a reaction as I did.
For the first experiment, I had a conversation with my best friend and attempted to maintain eye contact at all costs. She didn't react at all during the first fifteen seconds of the conversation. Then she attempted to glance away, and I subtly shifted back into her line of sight. At this point, she gave me a look but went along with it. We repeated this one more time. After another fifteen seconds, she tried to look away again, and again, I prevented her from doing so. This time, she actually paused in the conversation for a second and gave me a really weird look before continuing. Afterwards, she only maintained eye contact for five seconds before looking all the way off to the side so I literally had to take a couple of steps to regain eye contact. At this point, she threw up her hands and asked what the hell I was doing. My constant attempts to maintain eye contact bothered her so much that we couldn't even have a full two minute conversation. Maintaining constant eye contact, at least in our culture, is uncomfortable and abnormal.
During the second experiment, I had a conversation with my brother and never made eye contact. He spoke for about thirty seconds with no reaction. For the next minute seconds or so, he made subtle attempts to attract my attention. He cleared this throat, paused in the middle of a sentence, and said "um" far more often than he normally does. His attempts to attract at least some kind of eye contact then became more desperate. He asked me to look at something he was holding to force me to look at him as well. I replied, "Sure, in a minute." At this point, he blew up and yelled, "Are you even listening to me?" This experiment showed that in our culture, eye contact shows attention and demonstrates that you are really listening to what someone is saying. Lack of eye contact is almost disrespectful.
For the final experiment, I stood face to face in the living room with my boyfriend and very, very slowly moved towards him while we were speaking. My boyfriend and I are very comfortable with one another, so he let me get pretty close (about 8 inches or so away) before he took a step backwards. Although he kept backing up, he didn't pause in the conversation, act oddly, or ask me what I was doing. In fact, he didn't seem to realize what was happening until he hit the wall. Then he looked really confused and asked where we were going. This experiment showed that we maintain a specific distance between people when conversing. When that distance gets too small, we automatically take a step backward in order to become comfortable again.
Overall, this activity made me realize how important nonverbal codes are in communication. When nonverbal codes get broken, we feel uncomfortable and cannot maintain normal verbal communication unless we can correct the situation. Have you ever had a conversation with someone from another culture where their nonverbal codes were different than yours? How did you react? Did the difference in nonverbals cause any miscommunication?
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When I talked to an Indian girl, she clicked her tongue sometimes. In my culture, clicking one's tongue means "I am irritating". I thought I might have said something wrong or rude. However, she looked happy. Then I talked another Indian woman and she also clicked her tonge in a conversation. At this time I found that in their culture, clicking one's tongue does not have same meaning as my culture have.
ReplyDeleteIn business I don't recall ever having any real issues and these were the people I most often came into contact with from other cultures. I know Germans are different, but part of acclimating when living there is to learn some of those things so you can avoid situations where offense is given or taken.
ReplyDeleteI haven't really had any experiences with someone from a different culture that I can think of but I know one of my friends always stands really close to you when you’re talking as if she had a hard time hearing or something. Sometimes interfering with your personal bubble and making it had to continue the conversation with her right in your face.
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