Obstacles to Nonverbal Communication and Nonverbal Equilibrium across Cultures: Master Thesis

Von Harald März

We all decode non-verbal communication on a daily basis. Most of it goes unnoticed (even to ourselves) but we all do it. However, although we are relatively good in determining moods and intentions from another person's non-verbal behaviour, there is still a lot we are yet unable to see.
Since I was a small child I have been fascinated by the idea to learn more about other people through their body language and other non-verbal cues. After I had started my studies in Austria, I also got more and more interested in international business, specifically the cultural aspects of it. This interest intensified after my various experiences with people from other cultures in Austria and abroad. I could not help but to notice that my conversations just not went as smoothly as I was used to when conversing with a fellow Austrian. Thus, it was a natural choice for me to try to bring both aspects together when the time for choosing my master thesis topic had arrived. The result is a fairly comprehensive coverage of non-verbal communication in the context of culture and business which is entirely based on research.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Erscheinungsdatum: 30. Sept. 2018
• ISBN: 9783742720818

Buchvorschau

Preface

We all decode non-verbal communication on a daily basis. Most of it goes unnoticed (even to ourselves) but we all do it. However, although we are relatively good in determining moods and intentions from another person’s non-verbal behaviour, there is still a lot we are yet unable to see.

Since I was a small child I have been fascinated by the idea to learn more about other people through their body language and other non-verbal cues. After I had started my studies in Austria, I also got more and more interested in international business, specifically the cultural aspects of it. This interest intensified after my various experiences with people from other cultures in Austria and abroad. I could not help but to notice that my conversations just not went as smoothly as I was used to when conversing with a fellow Austrian. Thus, it was a natural choice for me to try to bring both aspects together when the time for choosing my master thesis topic had arrived. The result is a fairly comprehensive coverage of non-verbal communication in the context of culture and business which is entirely based on research.

I want to thank my supervisor a.-Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Erna Szabo MBA from Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz (Austria) as well as my Austrian and Taiwanese experiment and interview partners. I could not have done it without you.

As for you, the reader, I want to thank you for your decision to enhance your understanding and skills about nonverbal-communication and culture by taking a look at solid, research-based facts instead of relying on mere hearsay.

Finally, I want to thank all the researchers and authors which provided the material on which this thesis is based. I give full credit to all sources by using APA-style citations in the text and below pictures. In addition to this, a full list of all the sources can be found in the Reference List chapter. I encourage you to take a look and select the most interesting titles for your further reading. There is a lot more to see and read than the parts which I have selected for the synthesis of my arguments.

1 Introduction

Nonverbal communication is everywhere where people can be found. It provides a constant stream of information to a person’s environment and has various functions such as communicating our feelings or attempting to elicit certain reactions in another person (e.g., Morris, 1977). It does not have to rely on words and is sending signals even when the voice is absent. It is such a powerful communication tool that even a short period of time suffices to give us a good impression of a situation or person (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992; 1993).

In a similar vein, culture accompanies us every day around us and within us. Given the current development of business and technology, cross-cultural encounters necessitating communication may become rather more common than scarce (Bennett et al., 2000; Collings et al., 2007; Thomas & Ely, 1996).

Research focusing on either nonverbal communication or culture is plenty (e.g., Ekman, 2003b; Hofstede, 2001), but literature combining both aspects in a detailed manner is scant. In general, mentioning is made of only a few examples to corroborate the broad claim that nonverbal communication is important and that cultural differences exist (Adler, 2008). It remains unclear which exact role nonverbal behaviour plays in intercultural communication and what the details or underlying reasons may be. Yet, especially international management may succumb to the effects of nonverbal communication differences caused by culture. Communicating with a multicultural workforce and negotiations with business partners of various international backgrounds are situations that may arise easily when being in the process of establishing and managing a foreign subsidiary or when entering a new market. Even importing and exporting might already necessitate face-to-face negotiations with people from another culture. This thesis tries to contribute to the existing literature and assist international managers by addressing this issue. Nevertheless, nonverbal communication can mean many things, including the wearing of inanimate objects, which is why this term will be limited to the three big and distinct elements of body language, proxemics, and voice to provide focus to the research of this thesis (for more details see Section 2.1). Hence the main research question will be:

What kind of role do body language, proxemics, and voice play as obstacles in nonverbal communication across cultures and what are potential reasons for this?

Aside from the nonverbal behaviour in general, there is also a specific element of it that merits special attention with regard to crossing cultural boundaries. This is the affiliative conflict theory and the resulting nonverbal equilibrium of Argyle and Dean (1965). In one sentence, the affiliative conflict theory states that a certain level of affiliation between two people finds its expression in different nonverbal signals (e.g., distance, eye contact) and that if there is a change in one of these signals that would not fit this level of affiliation it would be compensated by another nonverbal signal. Peterson (1973) suggests cultural dissimilarities for this theory and Graham (1985) delivers indications that seem to point into this direction. However, this question is not answered by the existing research. Thus, this thesis will try to better understand this point with the following sub-question:

What differences are there in affiliative, nonverbal equilibrium levels with concern to body language, proxemics, and voice across cultures?

In order to deal with these two research questions, this paper will provide a literature review which will cover a definition of nonverbal communication, a look into the humans’ ability to decode nonverbal communication, a description of the affiliative conflict theory and the nonverbal equilibrium, an evaluation of nonverbal communication in the context of culture and international business, and a coverage of the three big elements body language, proxemics, and paralanguage. The literature part will be followed up by the empirical part which includes information on the reference cultures Austria and Taiwan, a presentation of the sample and the employed procedure, the findings, as well as the final discussion. Finally, the last parts will focus on implications for scholars and practitioners, limitations, and the request for further research with a conclusion posing the end of the paper.

I. Literature Part

2 Nonverbal communication and the human

Nonverbal communication is pervasive. It most likely accompanies us in all face-to-face encounters that we experience in our daily lives. Even in our modern times with all digital devices it seems we still find ourselves looking into another person’s eyes may it be in situations of communication or silent interaction. As a matter of fact, only part of our communication is really verbal (Millar, 2008). As soon as two people meet each other, the nonverbal dance begins. This involves off-work situations but also the power plays and metaphorical fights in the arenas of the business environment. To begin examining this topic, this chapter will look in more detail into what exactly nonverbal communication represents and whether human beings are able to understand it. The following sections first provide a definition for nonverbal communication, then evaluate our decoding abilities, and finally investigate a theory that allows us to see how our levels of interpersonal affiliation may influence our nonverbal signals.

2.1 Definition of nonverbal communication

Although everyone might have a slight idea about what it could be, the definition of nonverbal communication is not always easy. The nonverbal dictionary, a website which collects and summarises research regarding nonverbal communication, features entries beginning with Adam’s-Apple-Jump and ending with Zygomatic Smile (Givens, 2016). However, it also features topics like Arm Wear, Color Cue, Ergonomics of the Mind, Hair Cue, and Shoes.

These latter points do have some justification when it comes to their ability of communicating nonverbal messages. To exemplify this, a brief overview of some aspects of colour will be given. Heller (2011) published the results of a bigger study about how people perceive colours and analysed the outcomes by reviewing existing literature on the topic. According to her, different feelings are being linked to different colours. Colours affect us in many different ways, but one way to do so is via psychological influence. This point is equally mentioned by Vollmar (2012), who also reviewed the matter of colour. For this, it is important to investigate the context in which the colour originally appeared. Moreover, colours seem to take on a special meaning depending on how they are being combined with each other (Heller, 2011). To start with an example, approximately 70 % of the subjects felt the colour red to be related to love. However, 47 % also felt it to be related to hatred. This latter meaning could then be emphasised by combining red with black, the latter colour having the tendency to emphasise the negative connotations of other colours. To further consolidate the meaning of colour, other colour-related meanings would be violet for extravagance, blue for distance, green for live, pink for femininity, and white for cleanliness (Heller, 2011). With regard to the topic of this thesis, colour also offers cross-cultural peculiarities. To name two examples, green has the connotation of holiness for the disciples of the Islam (Heller, 2011), whereas yellow becomes holy in the area of the Himalaya (e.g., China, India) (Vollmar, 2012). This should demonstrate that colour is indeed capable of carrying nonverbal messages.

Together with all the other potential facets of nonverbal communication in the broad sense, this presents an almost overwhelming array of topic areas and an indifferent inclusion of all of them would render any resulting definition necessarily cumbersome and complex. Nonetheless, the nonverbal dictionary (Givens, 2016) also features an entry for nonverbal communication itself. Here, the first sentence regarding the definition reads: The process of sending and receiving wordless messages by means of facial expressions, gaze, gestures, postures, and tones of voice (Givens, 2016). Later, grooming habits and space positioning are also mentioned. Thus, a good working definition, which captures the essential elements of nonverbal communication and, at the same time, helps to keep the scope of this thesis sufficiently narrow, would be the following:

Nonverbal communication constitutes communication based on body language, voice, and proxemics, excluding the use of words.

This definition places emphasis on the nonverbal signals emanating directly from our body. It, thereby, basically excludes everything attached to our body, like adornment of any kind.

Given that the body is assembled of several different parts, all with their own ability to engage in nonverbal signalling, this thesis separates it into different subsections instead of dealing with this complex instrument of nonverbal communication in its whole under a single heading. To allow for a reasonable separation, several publications concerning body language have been consulted in order to find the best structure (e.g., Collett, 2003; Navarro, 2011; Morris, 1986). Consequently, the resulting substructure of the chapter for body language should help breaking the body down to enough detail, while avoiding over-atomisation from a body language point of view. The reason why proxemics will not be subsumed under the heading of body language is that it does rather focus on how a single body is being located in relation to other bodies and not so much on how the body itself expresses itself. Hence, it may be better discussed in its own chapter. The voice earns its own chapter because it can easily be separated from the body. In other words, another person could easily listen to and make judgements about another person on the basis of voice recording without having to see the other person’s body or location in space. Regarding the single sections, the focus will rather be on the basic messages which the different areas can signal (e.g., interest, dominance) than on the various, single cues. This is because it would be most likely impossible to review all the existing, different gestures and signals in sufficient detail without creating a comprehensive compendium that would by far exceed the scope of this thesis.

As for the basic literature of the review for most of the sections regarding body language, this thesis will draw on the material of David Givens and Desmond Morris. The former has conducted major work in his creation of the nonverbal dictionary, which is comprehensive and appears to be sufficiently scientific. The publications of the latter reappear as sources of several other publications regarding nonverbal communication and further include details about anatomy and evolutionary backgrounds. For the face, Paul Ekman and his research colleagues will supply much of the research utilised. Concerning the chapter for proxemics (Chapter 5), Edward T. Hall may lay the groundwork. Due to their importance, these authors will provide the cornerstones of the different sections. But before jumping into the realm of concrete expressions and actions, some sections regarding a few basic conditions of nonverbal communication will be discussed in order to provide the necessary context.

2.2 Human ability to decode nonverbal communication

Morris (1977) states that one aspect of nonverbal signals is to clearly transmit meaning with minimal ambiguity. He goes on by explaining that this is usually done by standardising nonverbal signs so they may not be confused with other gestures. Implicitly, this indicates that we are able to understand and react to those signals. If we were unable to do so, the need to reduce ambiguity would make no sense as we would be unable to make use of nonverbal cues no matter if they were crystal-clear or absolutely ambiguous.

A meta-analysis of forty-four studies compiled by Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) sheds some light on the human ability to comprehend nonverbal signals. Even though the relative importance of nonverbal signals as compared to the verbal ones varies depending on several factors (e.g., the kind of message transmitted), the authors found that nonverbal cues contribute to the accurate judgement of a situation. Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) further unveiled that short periods of observation are sufficient for arriving at an accurate judgement. To be more specific, observation of less than 30 seconds appears to be as accurate as observations up to 5 minutes. Seemingly, accuracy does not increase with longer observations. Notwithstanding this, having basically relied on data about the judgement of videotaped situations, the authors admit that these findings may suffer when trying to apply them to face-to-face interactions since less accurate judgements seem to be made in these situations. They suggest that this could be grounded in the fact that face-to-face interactions may be more distracting due to other factors than when watching a video. In another paper, Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) presented further research regarding the judgement accuracy concerning nonverbal behaviour. This time, subjects were asked to predict the evaluations of teachers based on their nonverbal demeanour. Again, the results showed that people are relatively accurate in their judgements. Moreover, the authors found that six seconds of observation (three clips of two seconds) allowed for similar accuracy as 30 seconds of observation (three clips of ten seconds). This gives credence to the argument that we are able to decode nonverbal behaviour with some accuracy, even if the time to do so is limited.

With particular respect to the face, research indicates that people are generally able to recognise and correctly distinguish facially expressed emotions. This equally holds true for spontaneous expressions of the face (Ekman et al., 1974). Moreover, our own facial muscles respond to certain facial signals we receive without our being conscious of it (Surakka & Hietanen, 1998). Despite this encouraging evidence, it appears as if more subtle facial expressions of the face are much more difficult to spot for untrained people, although further training can reliably improve this ability (Ekman, 2003b; Ekman & Friesen, 1975).

One area that has commonly brought forth studies regarding the decoding of nonverbal behaviour is the field of deception detection (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992). Overall, it seems as if we are hardly better than chance in catching liars (Ekman, 2009). This basically means that untrained people make insufficient use of the nonverbal cues available. Yet, even people allegedly trained in lie detection do not seem to perform significantly better (Anderson et al., 1999). Moreover, this inability to accurately distinguish a lie from a truth persists even after calling the judged person a friend for about six months (Anderson et al., 1999). However, there are certain people who do significantly better in detecting lies. These experts seem to be particularly savvy in attending to nonverbal cues in a way in which others do not (although they may also make use of verbal cues to some extent) (O’Sullivan & Ekman, 2004). Even so, there are some hints that non-experts may as well pick up on certain cues without knowing it. In an experiment of Anderson et al. (1999), people referred more frequently to verbal cues when explaining their judgement of a truth, whereas visual cues were more commonly mentioned when talking about their judgement of lies. This implies that, at least unconsciously, we may be able to spot lies by the means of nonverbal information. Furthermore, the same experiment has shown that people who concentrated on auditory cues of the voice were more successful in distinguishing between truths and lies than the average. Additional support for the importance of nonverbal cues in deception detection can be drawn from the paper of Etcoff et al. (2000) who found that people who lost their capability to accurately comprehend speech are seemingly better in spotting lies than others. The authors propose that this could be the result of compensation, which puts the focus more on nonverbal cues since speech is no longer fully available. Nevertheless, it has to be mentioned that there is no single nonverbal cue indicative of a lie. There is no such a thing as a lie gesture but there are gestures which can indicate that what a person says is at odds with what that person feels, thinks, or beliefs and it seems possible that training in this area could enhance an individual’s lie detection skills (Ekman, 2003a; 2009) despite the unsatisfactory results mentioned above. As a result, detecting deception is not an easy task and, therefore, a failure in detecting deception is not the same as a failure in interpreting nonverbal cues per se due to the difference in difficulty. It only shows the limits that we face concerning reading other individuals’ nonverbal signals.

In total, this evidence suggests that we are well able to decode nonverbal communication. However, it also shows that we are not perfect in it, particularly in the case of lie detection, and that additional training could further enhance our abilities in this area. Intriguingly, multinational businesses have already been advised to include nonverbal communication into the training programs for their employees (Briggs & Harwood, 1982).

2.3 Finding a nonverbal equilibrium in the affiliative conflict theory

With regard to nonverbal communication, there is another issue that merits additional attention. It seems as if there exists a certain equilibrium in nonverbal communication with respect to the tolerated level of intimacy, where intimacy means the overall closeness of another person, regardless of gender. The idea of nonverbal equilibrium stems from Argyle and Dean (1965) and has been baptised affiliative conflict theory. By focusing on the nonverbal elements of proximity and eye contact, Argyle and Dean (1965) postulate that if a person draws too near to us and disturbs our equilibrium of intimacy, we rebalance this closer proximity by reducing eye contact, which equally reduces the overall, nonverbal level of affiliation and eventually may re-establish our preferred equilibrium level (Argyle & Dean, 1965). To arrive at this assertion, Argyle and Dean (1965) conducted several experiments with a focus on the variables of eye contact and proximity. One of their experiments included to ask people to locate themselves in a distance of their comfort near certain things, including another person that had the eyes either open or closed. In a series of other experiments of the same paper, the authors created an interaction situation with a confederate and a subject in which the sitting distances between the confederate and the subject were fixed. In addition to this, the confederate had the task of continuously staring at the subject during the interaction. In all the experiments undertaken by Argyle and Dean (1965), the subjects where only subsequently informed about the real purpose of the experiment in order to safeguard against potential biases. However, in at least some of the experiments the sample was not representative.

Their findings demonstrated in various ways that there seems to be an equilibrium between eye contact and proximity of the other person. For instance, when a person A was asked to locate him- or herself close to a person B, who had the eyes open, person A tended to chose a wider distance than when person B had the eyes closed. In a similar