The Nonverbal Communication Reader

Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.) 2008. The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press.

The use of smell as a communication code is called olfactics. This code also includes olfactic elements that are hard to manage or control, such as bodily hormones. (Guerrero & Hecht 2008: 46)

Olfactics is "The study of smells and how they are perceived." I see no point in perpetuating this emic field, as most emic fields (e.g. kinesics, proxemics, tactilesics) are stillborns. This, turns out, is not an exception. Cf. Piesse, Charles Henry 1887. Olfactics and the Physical Senses. London: Piesse and Lubin.

Hesitancies and other types of pauses can also affect how you are perceived (your competence and credibility, for example) as well as how your words are interpreted. Take the following phrase: Woman without her man is helpless. If you believe in equality of the sexes, you probably didn't like the "sound" of that statement. Now read the same statement with pauses included: Woman: without her, man is helpless. The sentence now has a completely different meaning. (Guerrero & Hecht 2008: 46)

Yeah, now it demeans men instead of women.

Finally, regulators help you structure and manage interaction. You might lean forward and put your hands out when you are interrupting or want a chance to speak. Similarly, if you are in a student role, you might raise your hand if you want to speak. If you are the teacher or group leader, you might point at people to let them know it is okay for them to take a speaking turn. Regulators such as these help keep conversations running smoothly and efficiently. (Guerrero & Hecht 2008: 103-104)

That is an upbeat utilitarian view of regulators. Regulators can also be disruptive, aggressive, and controlling (dominating).

The contact codes include both proxemics and haptics. Proxemics is concerned with the perception and use of space. This includes how space is organized, how territory is used and defended, and how distance is maintained and altered between and among people. Haptics refers to touch behavior, which is sometimes called tactile communication.
The use of space involves the complicated balancing of affiliative and privacy needs. People have the need to affiliate or be in contact with other people. Very few people can survive in isolation for extended periods of time. People offer us the stimulation, support, and contact needed for psychological and physical health. On the other hand, people also need privacy. People prefer to have space around them and to be alone for certain periods of time. (Guerrero & Hecht 2008: 182)

Western people do.

Guerrero, Laura K., Michael L. Hecht and Jospeh A. DeVito 2008. Perspectives on Defining and Understanding Nonverbal Communication. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 3-20.

Even when communicating via e-mail, people often insert nonverbal forms of communication, such as smiley faces bold letters, and exaggerated punctiation (!!!!!!!). (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 3-4)

These are not exactly "nonverbal", as they belong to the expressive means of verbal language. These are in effect paralinguistic forms of communication.

However, there are times when the nonverbal messages are more influential than verbal messages. Nonverbal messages are particularly important when expressing emotion, forming impressions, and communicating relational messages, such as intimacy and dominance (Noller 1984; Patterson, 1983). (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 5)

Emotive conative and phatic (metacommunicative, μ-) functions. Intimacy and dominance boil down to sexuality and aggression.

Nonverbal communication includes all the messages other than words that people exchange in interactive contexts. However, this does not mean that everything other than words counts as nonverbal communication; the nonverbal behavior must be a message. To qualify as a message, a behavior typically must be sent with intent/or it must typically be interpreted by others as meaning something. In other words, it must have a social meaning. For example, if you vary your voice tone to make it clear that you are being sarcastic, you have communicated with intent. If you are nervous when you give a public speech, and your hands and voice shake a little bit, you are not intentionally communicating your nervousness. Nonetheless, the audience is likely to attoch a meaning to (and therefore to interpret) your shaking hands and voice as signs of nervousness. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 5-6)

A somewhat useless distinction, because nonverbal communication may occur without conscious awareness, making the question of intent superfluous.

As Frey, Botan, Friedman, and Kreps (1991) stated, "Communication is the management of messages for the purpose of creating meaning. That is, communication occurs whenever a person attempts to send a message or whenever a person perceives and assigns meaning to behavior" (p. 28). This doesn't mean, however, that all behaviors constitute communicative messages (Bavelas, 1991). Messages stand for something other than themselves. Behavior, in contrast, stands for itself. It just is. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 6)

So intrinsically coded nonverbal communication does not exist?

We define the nonverbal codes by the means of expression we use. Each code is communicated by a different nonverbal channel, such as your body, the environment, or the space between people. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 9)

This could be called "the channel reliance fallacy", a vestige of early communication theory that investigated the technical aspects of communication. Identifying codes with channels makes the notion of code moot. It is more likely that nonverbal codes transcend specific channels, or that any given channel may demonstrate several codes.

Sending Relational Messages. You use nonverbal behaviors to tell others how you feel about them. You alse evaluate the nonverbal communication of others to try to figure out how they feel about you. Many different positive relational messages are communicated nonverbally. You can show others that you like them, are similar to them, and trust them. You can also use nonverbal communication to help define a relationship as formal or informal, and as task related or socially oriented (Burgoon et al., 1996). (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 11)

This is called metacommunication. The bold part concerns phatic communion, especially in the dimension of anxiety or stress (due to strangers or threatening behaviour). Otherwise it seems that this specific line of thought originates from Goffman, who expanded metacommunication to concerns of the social organization of gatherings, e.g. the definition of the situation (formal, informal, focused, unfocused).

The opposite of immediacy is nonimmediacy. Nonimmediacy functions to create distance and cut off communication. Maintaining large distances, leaning and looking away from someone, and engaging in defensive posturing, such as hugging your arms around your body, signal that you are unavailable for communication and possibly dislike someone. Whether nonverbal behaviors are used to signal affiliation or distance, they help us communicate our feelings without necessarily having to verbalize them. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 12)

This is a peaseism. Hugging your arms around your body does not mean what Pease thought it meant. Tsk, tsk, perpetuating myths.

Sending Messages of Power and Persuasion. Nonverbal messages exercise social control (Patterson, 1983). Such messages can beused to control people and events, to establish or exert power, or to dominate others. Think of the strong leaders you know. They probably have a distinctive nonverbal style. Powerful people touch others more thhan they are touched. They look at others less than they are looked at (except when they use gaze to "stare someone down") and they have control over time and territory. For example, presidents of large corporations have the power to start and stop meetings and to arrive late. They can also control whether meetings are held and who is allowed to attend particular meetings. Powerful people also take up more space than less powerful people, and environments can be used to control people by structuring interaction. Take a look at your classroom. If it is like most others, the teacher will have a large share of the space to move around in, and the chairs will be arranged so that the students pay attention to the teacher and not to each other. Desks also prevent students from moving around and taking up too much space. Space is used similarly in business settings, with executives having large private offices protected by territorial markers (such as a secretary who controls who enters), and subordinates working side by side or in small cubbyholes. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 14)

More hope and fanfare than actual results. The part about touching is false, if I remember correctly. Not to mention culturally conditioned. It's a powerful idea, the nonverbal communication of power, but confused too much with dominance.

Whether you are trying to create a positive first impression, signal that you are attracted to someone, or get someone to do something for you, nonverbal communication does not occur in vacuum. As our definition of nonverbal communication suggests, nonverbal messages are exchanged within an intercational context. This context includes cultural, relational, and situational elements. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 15)

Nonverbal communication also occurs outside of interactional contexts. There can be nonverbal communication without mutual awareness and perception.

The important point here is that, like verbal communication, nonverbal communication should be viewed as a "cultural event." Interestingly enough, a booklet was distributed to all 37,000 United States volunteers working the Pan American Games to warn them that nonverbal messages are evaluated differently across cultures:

Realize that gestures can be significant. Hand motions which are innocent in one culture may be offensive in another. Keep your hands relatively still and refrain from pointing - instead use wide arm motions, turning your head in the desired direction. Avoid scratching your nose, indicating the number two by holding up two fingers, or making the thumbs up or the "O.K." sign. (Sports Illustrated, Augist, 1987, p. 16)

Although virtually all cultures interpret some nonverbal behaviors similarly (such as smiling), all cultures also differ from one another in interpreting other nonverbal messages. The message is clear. When you are in a different culture, find out the nonverbal rules that influence how your behavior will be interpreted. (Guerrero, Hecht & DeVito 2008: 15)

Nah, even smiling is not universal. A smile means different things for Russians and Americans. Display Rules are serious business.

Spitzberg, Brian H. 2008. Perspectives on Nonverbal Communication Skills. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 21-26.

Certainly, the search for these skills is an important one. An examination of over 300 studies and reviews conducted by Spitzberg and Cupach (1988, 2002) indicate that people who are less socially skilled are likely to be lower in self-esteem, academic success, and occupational success; and higher in levels of loneliness, shyness, depression, mental illness, marital distress, hypertension, stress, and anxiety. Psychological problems such as depression, social anxiety, schizophrenia, eating disorders, personality disorder, and mental health are all deeply affected by the interpersonal skills through which social life is conducted (Segrin, 2001). (Spitzberg 2008: 22)

Sounds like Jurgen Ruesch. Although it also sounds like a marketing ploy for social skills training.

Dillard (2002) examined the results of sixteen studies of social skills. By looking at the results of several different studies, they were able to make more reliable and confident conclusions about which behaviors are most consistently perceived to be skillful or competent. Out of twelve behaviors studied, nine were nonverbal: response latency (the average or total amount of time it takes after one person stops talking before the other person begins talking), eye gaze (the average or total amount of time a conversant spends looking in the general region of the other person's face), eye contact (the average or total amount of time spent looking directly at the other person's eyes), smiles (the frequency or total number of smiles in a conversation), head movements (generally, the number of head nods indicating understanding, agreement, or reinforcement), adaptors (e.g., finger-tapping, hair-twirling, or ring-twisting behaviors), volume (the average loudness of talk), vocal variety (the level of expressiveness in tone, pitch, pace, and other vocal qualities), and talk time (either the total amount of time a person spends talking or the average duration of speaking turns). All of these behaviors were related to perceptions of subject skillfulness; generally speaking, the more of each of these behaviors a person displayed, the more competent the person was perceived to be. The exception was the category of adaptors, such that the fewer adoptors displayed, the more competent the person was considered to be. Similar results have been found in other studies, for behaviors such as gestures, open or facing body orientation, visual attention, body recline, dress, time talked, and smiles (Berry & Hansen, 2000; Gifford, Ng, & Wilkinson, 1985). (Spitzberg 2008: 22)

The problem here is that most sources were published in the 1980s, when the means of measurements weren't exactly ideal. It also coincides with the discourse of positive thinking and "confidence solves everything" type of attitude.

Extensive analyses indicated that these behaviors can be characterized according to four fundamental dimensions: coordination, attentiveness, composure, and expressiveness. Coordination concerns how well verbal speaking turns are managed, maintaining topical flow, and handling the initiation and termination of conversations. This dimension consists of behaviors such as "initiation of new topics," "maintenance of topics and follow-up comments," "use of time relative to partner," and "speaker fluency." Attentiveness represents the extent to which someone shows attention to, concern for, and interest in the other person in the conversation. It is exemplified by behaviors such as "use of eye contact," "nodding of head in response to partner's statements," "lean toward partner," and "speaking about self" and about "partner." Composure involves not only anxiety and nervousness, but also level of confidence and assertiveness. Composure (or lack thereof) is most clearly indicated by behaviors such as "vocal confidence," "shaking or nervous twitches," "posture," and "fidgeting." Finally, expressiveness concerns the level of animation and activity in the conversation and is identified by behavior such as "smiling and/or laughing," "use of gestures," "facias expressiveness," "volume," "vocal variety," and "speaking rate." (Spitzberg 2008: 24)

A definition of expressiveness could go a long way towards improving the so-called emotive function.

Some skills will be more important for creating an impression of power or status (e.g., raised eyebrows, closer interpersonal distance; Hall, coats & LeBeau, 2005), whereas others are more closely related to avoiding the impression of being anxious (e.g., lack of fidgeting, polite smiles; Heerey & Kring, 2007). (Spitzberg 2008: 24-25)

Haha, what?

Hecht, Michael L. and Laura K. Guerrero 2008. Perspectives on Nonverbal Research Methods. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 27-43.

Most research questions fall under one of the following types: (1) finding descriptive categories; (2) finding relationships between things; (3) finding differences in one thing based on another thing. Examples for each type of question are provided next.

1. Describe a type of nonverbal behavior. For example, what rae the different styles of walking?
   Planalp (see article 43) was interested in describing the various ways that emotion is expressed. Planalp and her colleagues had people fill out questionnaires when they noticed that someone they knew was feeling an emotion. The questionnaire asked them to describe "how they could tell" that the person was experiencing an emotion. The responses to this question were then categorized into various types of emotional cues, such as vocal cues, facial cues, and physiological cues.
2. Describe how one type of nonverbal behavior is related to another type of nonverbal behavior or to a perception or outcome. For example, do we touch more if eye contact increases? How do people perceive individuals who use very high levels of touch and eye contact?
   Kraut and Johnston (article 15) describe how the presence of others influences smiling. They found that in four situations, people smile more when others are around than when they are alone and tend to use smiling to express friendliness rather than inner happiness.
3. Describe how nonverbal behavior differs based on the type of person, group, relationship, or situation. For example, do children behave differently than adults? Do people from different cultures display different amounts of touch? Do people show different levels of eye gaze when with friends as compared to strangers? Do people behave differently in various types of environments (e.g., in bright orange vs. soft pink rooms)?
   Guerrero and Andersen (article 25) examined two of these types of questions. They observed the touch behavior of heterosexual romantic couples in movie theater and zoo lines. They found that men tended to initiate touch in casual dating relationships, whereas women tended to initiate touch in married relationships. They also found that couples who were seriously dating touched more than couples who were casually dating or married. Thus, this study answers questions regarding possible differences due to a personal attribute (female vs. male) and the relationships (casually dating vs. seriously dating vs. married).

Research questions, such as those described above, are used when a researcher does not want to limit what is looked at/or if there is not enough information to make a specific prediction (e.g., when examining a new area of research). It is a good idea to ask a research question if a researcher wants to describe an important context for nonverbal behaviors (e.g., airports where terrorists might be present), or if there hasn't been very much previous research on a particular topic, or if the past research on an issue has been inconsistent or contradictory. (Hecht & Guerrero 2008: 29-30)

This reminds me of a suggestion in a how-to-do-easy-research type of book. It was advised to not try to be original but to take something that has already been studied and add a variable.

You could also record the interactions on DVD so you could check for observable differences in people's behavior when they were lying versus the truth. (Hecht & Guerrero 2008: 35)

DVD? Oh, 2008.

Regardless of whether the study uses an experiment or an observation, the researcher will have to record nonverbal communication or people's reactions to nonverbal behavior. Recording describes nonverbal communication. When a researcher relates this description to descriptions of other nonverbal behavior, emotions, attitudes, people, or situations, we can try to predict or explain nonverbal communication. The five most common methods of recording used in nonverbal research are surveys, coding systems, field notes, diaries, and measures of physiological response. (Hecht & Guerrero 2008: 37)

Recording more like scribes than describes nonverbal communication. Describing implies linguistic operations foreign to devices that record.

Field Notes. A third recording method is called field notes. Field notes may use one of the previous systems or may just involve going into a setting and writing down descriptions of the observations. It is usually best to record the notes while making the obvervation. If this interferes with the situation (for example, writing notes at a party), then the researcher will record the observations as soon afterward as they can. Some observers will even retreat to the bathroom to record notes as soon as possible! These notes will not be as clear or as descriptive as data gathered by the previous two systems, but they leave the researcher free to observe anything that occurs rather than just what is in the recoding system. Sometimes audiotape recorders are used for field notes. At times researchers use digital cameras or cell phones to record events. These recordings can later be coded using one of the systems above, and/or the researchers can use open-ended notes to describe the behaviors they have recorded. (Hecht & Guerrero 2008: 40)

Edward T. Hall, for example, carried a spy camera with him to take of pictures of people's proxemic behaviour in public places.

Myers, Philip N., Jr., and Frank A. Biocca 2008[1992]. The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 50-58.

Silverstein et al. (1986) examined the body representations and the preoccupation with thinness in various media: (a) television shows and their characters; (b) magazine advertisements and articles dealing with body shape and size, dieting, food and drink, or cooking; (c) photographs of women in two women's magazines; and (d) photographs of female movie stars. (Myers & Biocca 2008[1992]: 51)

Body representations vs. body articulations?

Four hundred and fortyzsix female senior high school students were interviewed, and tricep skinfold measurements were taken to determine their body fat levels. (Myers & Biocca 2008[1992]: 54)

An archaic means to measure body fat (in 1967).

Medical records from more than a century ago show that successful weight loss brought a great deal of self-esteem and satisfaction to patients (Casper, 1983). Weight loss, in an attempt to achieve the ideal body image, is more than inches and pounds to the woman with an eating disorder - it becomes a way of life. Starvation, binge eating, and purging become intensely emotional experiences. As the illness progresses and weight continues to decrease, "anorexics become convinced that they are special and different, that being so thin makes them worthwhile, significant, extra-ordinary, eccentric, or outstanding; each one has a private word to describe the states of superiority she strives for" (Bruch, 1978, p. 79). (Myers & Biocca 2008[1992]: 55)

Isn't this what most people desire? Or maybe I'm just ill. In any case, I'd like to know more about these private words. The quote here is immediately followed with this: "Then they feel they are no longer able to communicate with ordinary people, who won't understand. [br] Such increasing isolation has probably the most [pg 75] corroding effect on the long-range tragic development. Deprived of all corrective experiences, in particular the contact with their own gae group during the important period of adolescent development, they become completely self-absorbed, ruminating only about weight and food. Their thinking and goals become bizarre, and they construct weird ideas about what happens to food." (Bruch 2001[1978]: 74-75) No illustrations of these private words are given and the style seems to be very hyperbolic.

Kurzban, Robert & Jason Weeden 2008[2005]. HurryDate: Mate Preferences in Action. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 59-68.

Overall, the results suggest that people tend to prefer mates who have observable characteristics that are valued by most people rather than mates who are similar to themselves. Choices about who was desirable to date were based more on physical attributes such as attractiveness, weight, height, and age rather than attributes such as education, religion, attitudes toward sex, number of children one has, or the desire to have children in the future. Specifically, women tended to choose men who had attractive faces, were tall, and whose weight was in proportion to their heigh. Men tended to choose women who had a low BMI, were younger and had an attractive face, with weight-to-height ratio being the most important determinant for whether a woman was given a "yes." To a lesser degree, people were likely to choose partners who were similar to them in terms of height and race. (Kurzban & Weeden 2008[2005]: 62)

Both genders seem to be interested in people who have a healthy-looking height-to-weight ratio.

HurryDate events provide strong evidence for the importance of generally agreed-upon mate values as opposed to mate values driven by assortative or other attribute-matching trends, and these generally agreed-upon mate values derive almost exclusively from observable attributes, such as physical attractiveness, BMI, height, age, and race. HurryDate participants are given three minutes in which to make their judgments, but they mostly could be made in three seconds. (Kurzban & Weeden 2008[2005]: 63)

E.g. people are not drawn to people who are similar or dissimilar to them, but rather towards a common image of attractiveness.

When compared directly, the size of the correlations between attractiveness ratings and desirability for men and women are of similar magnitudes. The crucial difference is that we were able to include BMI, which is a powerful determinant of women's bodily attractiveness, but not for men's - for men, factors such as waist-to-chest ratio play a much stronger role than BMI does (Maisey, Vale, Cornelissen, & Tovee, 1999). (Kurzban & Weeden 2008[2005]: 63)

I recall an episode (possibly the only one I've ever seen) of some Estonian dating show, in which Gabriel Kubjas ("Farmi Gabriel") was a contestant. Despite being in a good shape, moderately handsome and juggling with fire, he got turned down by all but a single heavier Russian woman. When asked why 20 girls turned him down, one actually said something that his chest looks too big. He was wearing a fancy blouse that made his chest look double the size of his waist. He overdid it by so large a margin that he came across as grotesque.

Kaiser, Susan B. 2008[1997]. Women's Appearance and Clothing within Organizations. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 74-81.

Although men have a fairly established code of business attire and are likely to be viewed as both attractive and competent if they follow this code, women seem to be forced in some organizational contexts to make a choice between aesthetics and creativity versus competence. (Kaiser 2008[1997]: 76-77)

I'm more interested in why there's this strict dressing code for men in the first place.

Frank, Mark G. and Thomas Gilovich 2008[1988]. Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 82-85.

A convenient feature of the traditional American Western films was the ease with which the viewer could distinguish the good guys from the bad guys: The bad guys wore the black hats. Of course, film directors did not invent this connection between black and evil, but built upon an existing association that extends deep into our culture and language. When a terrible thing happens on a given day, we refer to it as a "black day," as when the Depression was ushered in by the infamous "Black Thursday." We can hurt ourselves by "blackening" our reputation or be hurt by others by being "blacklisted," "blackballed," or "blackmailed" (Willams, 1965). When the Chicago White Sox deliberately lost the 1919 World Series as part of a betting scheme, they became known as the Chicago Black Sox, and to this day this "dark" chapter in American sports history is known as the Black Sox Scandal. In a similar vein, Muhammed Ali has observed that we refer to white cake as "anger food cake" and dark cake as "devil's food cake." (Frank & Gilovich 2008[1988]: 82-83)

Inner Party members dress in black.

Furlow, F. Bryant 2008[1996]. The Smell of Love. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 86-93.

The French physician Paul Broca - noting that primates' social olfactory abilities are diminished compared to those of other mammals - asserted that monkeys, apes, and humans represent ascending steps from four-legged sniffling beasts to sight-oriented bipeds. (Furlow 2008[1996]: 87)

Naked apes.

Scent and Sentiment
Curiously, remembering a smell is usually difficult - yet when exposed to certain scents, many people may suddenly recall a distant childhood memory in emotionally rich detail. Some aromas even affect us physiologically. Laboratory researchers exploring human olfaction have found that:

• A faint trace of lemon significantly increases people's perception of their own health.
• Lavender incense contributes to a pleasant mood - but it lowers volunteers' mathematical abilities.
• A whiff of lavender and eucalyptus increases people's respiratory rate and aletrtness.
• The scent of phenethil alcohol (a constituent of rose oil) reduces blood pressure.

Such findings have led to the rapid development of an aromatherapy industry. Aromatherapist point to scientific findings that smell can dramatically affect our moods as evidence that therapy with aromatic oils can help buyers manage their emotional lives.
Mood is demonstrably affected by scent. But scientists have found that, despite some extravagant industry promises, the attraction value in perfumes resides strictly in their pleasantness, not their sexiness. So far, at least, store-bought scent is more decoration than mood manager or love potion. A subtle "look this way" nudge to the nose, inspiring a stranger's curiosity, or at most a smile, is all perfume advertisers can in good conscience claim for their products - not overwhelming and immediate infatuation. (Furlow 2008[1996]: 87)

Industry promises are almost always exaggerated, though.

What could be a source of what might be our very own pheromone?
Humans possess three major types of skin glands - sebaceous glands, eccrine (or sweat) glands, and apocrine glands. Sebaceous glands are most common on the face and forehead but occur around all of the body's openings, including eyelids, ears, nostrils, lips, and nipples. This placement is particularly handy, as the secretions of these glands kill potentially dangerous microorganisms. They alse contain fats that keep skin supple and waterproof - and, on the downside, cause acne. Little is known, however, about how sebaceous glands contribute to human body odor.
The sweat glands exude water and salt and are nonodorous in healthy people. That leaves the third potential source of a human pheromone - the apocrine gland. Apocrine glands hold special promise as the source of smells that might affect interpersonal interactions. They do not serve any temperature-managing functions in people, as they do in other animals. They occur in dense concentrations on hands, cheeks, scalp, breast areolas, and wherever we possess body hair - and are only functional after puberty, when we begin searching for mates.
Men's apocrine glands are larger than women's, and they secrete most actively during times of nervousness or excitement. Waiting colonies of bacteria turn apocrine secretions into the nexious fumes that keep deodorant makers in business. Hair provides surface area from which apocrine smells can diffuse - part of the reason why hairier men smell particularly pungent.
Most promising of all, apocrine glands exude odorous steroids known to affect sexual behavior in other mammals. Androsterone - a steroid related to the one that nearly doomed the hapless musk deer - is one such substance. Men secrete more androsterone than women do, and most men become unable to detect the stuff right around the time they start producing it themselves - at puberty. (Furlow 2008[1996]: 88-89)

The search for the human pheromone is futile.

The empirical proof of odor's effect on human sexual attraction came out of left field. Medical geneticists studying inheritance rules for the immune system, not smell physiologists, made a series of crucial discoveries that nobody believed were relevant to human mate preferences - at first.
A segment of our DNA called the major histocompatibility complex (MCH) codes for some disease-detecting structures, which function as the immune system's eyes. When a disease is recognized, the immune system's teeth - the killer T cells - are alerted, and they swarm the intruders, smothering them with destructive enzymes. MHC genes are "co-dominant." This means that if a lab mouse inherits a version of an MHC gene for resistance to Disease A from its mother and a version lending resistance to Disease B from its father, that mouse will be able to resist both diseases. Interestingly, when a female mouse is offered two suitors in mate choice trials, she inevitably chooses to mate with the one whose MHC genes least overlap with her own. (Furlow 2008[1996]: 90)

This is supposedly an aspect of the age-old biological war between humans and bacteria. It is supposedly also the case that after a woman is impregnated or starts taking birth control pills, her "histocompatibility" preferences invert.

Ekman, Paul and Wallace V. Friesen 2008[1972]. Hand Movements. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 105-108.

Whatever the genesis, the intent seems clear. Whether it's the outstretched hand or the palms pressed together, each signal suggests openness and a clear sign that the greeter is not carrying a weapon.
Some believe the hug or embrace originally had a similar purpose: the assurance that no weapons were hidden beneath the flowing robes worn from the time of the Egyptians through the Middle Ages. (Ekman & Friesen 2008[1972]: 110)

This must be where Pease got the idea that shaking hands comes from the tradition of checking for concealed weapons.

Grumet, Gerald W. 2008[1983]. Eye Contact: The Core of Interpersonal Relatedness. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 119-129.

In about 450 B.C. the Greek philosopher Empedocles explained vision as resulting from a stream of fiery corpuscles passing first from the eye to the object of vision and returning to the eye. Plato later wrote, "They set the face in front ... and constructed light-bearing eyes, and caused pure fire to flow through the eyes" (Siegel, 1970, p. 24). Such ancient theories reflect the sense of power ascribed to sight that bedeviled scientific thought until the 17th century, when Kepler correctly proposed that they eye was an optical instrument able to form an image on its own retina. Vision had always carried with it a sense of graphic truth and authenticity, placing it in a position of prominenc among the senses. Soltis (1966) notes, "One of our firmest ordinary beliefs is that whatever object we take to be visually perceived by us do exist" (p. 111). Gibson (1960) adds, "Visual perceiving often enough does not feel like knowing; instead it feels like an immediately acquaintance or a direct contact" (p. 220). Freese (1977) points out that if discrepant sensory information is received, the influence of sight is likely to predominate: "Visual perception is capable of overriding all other information should any of it conflict with the visual sense" (p. 72). (Grumet 2008[1983]: 119-120)

This sense of graphic truth and authenticity could also be the reason why people reportedly trust nonverbal communication more than verbal communication. The phrase itself is neat.

Eye contact is usually a first step in interpersonal engagement, beginning a train of action that develops and defines the relationship between the gazer and gazed upon. As Garrison and Arensberg (1976) note, "On eye contact, predator and prey, or rival and rival, or lover and loved, are alerted, tensed for what may come next, and a move follows: predator or rival to the attack, lover to tactile approach..." (p. 292). (Grumet 2008[1983]: 121)

Eye contact precedes greetings in the phatic sequence (utterance → speech → communion). Physical proximity (which enables eye contact in the first place) in turn precedes eye contact.

It should be noted that there is a difference between "looking" and "staring." The former is dynamically tied to the subject's behavior and is influenced by it, whereas the latter is not responsive to the other person's behavior and persists regardless of it. The fear engendered by a stare was well depicted in a study by Ellsworth and coworkers (1972), who had an experimenter on a motorbike stare at motorists stopped for a red light at an intersection. Not surprisingly, these motorists' departure from the intersection was significantly more rapid when the light changed, paralleling the flight behavior of animals. The authors note that "gazing at a person's face is an exceedingly salient stimulus with interpersonal implications which cannot be ignored" (p. 311). This phenomenon was well demonstrated in the World Chess Championship between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov in 1978. The Russian entourage supporting Karpov included Vladimir Zukhar, a parapsychologist and hypnotist: "His only job seemed to be to sit up front and stare at Korchnoi with his bulging, scary eyes. By the third game, Korchnoi was convinced he was being hypnotized. ... At game 7, Korchnoi, a nervous wreck by that time - and with Karpov way ahead in the match - started to yell, saying he would descent from the stage and poke Zukhar in the nose. Zukhar was moved to a seventh-row seat." (Schonberg, 1981, p. 37). (Grumet 2008[1983]: 122)

Lack of nonverbal ethics. I was once stared intensely by a group of students in the library. I assumed it was a group of psychology students working on exactly this topic. It made me uncomfortable, but without looking their way I could proceed working.

Direct eye contact between strangers may, on occasion, be described as "love at first sight," which is implied in the lyrics of "Some Enchanted Evening" by Oscar Hammerstein II:

Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger;
You may see a stranger across a crowded room;
And somehow you know, you know even then,
That somewhere you'll see her again and again.

The song suggests that a single glance at an unfamiliar person can produce an enormous emotional impact. While a one-way glance signifies one person's interest in another, a mutual glance signifies the inception of a relationship or what has been variously called "shared interocular intimacy" (Tomkins, p. 157), "participation in a wordless exchange" (Exline, 1963, p. 3), or "consciousness of consciousness" (Sartre, 1953, p. 363). (Grumet 2008[1983]: 123)

Or in Bateson's terms, mutual awareness and perception.

Willingness to Relate: A person's decision to look back into the eyes of someone who is already looking at him is one of the principal signals by which one denotes a willingness to begin an encounter, for ocular engagement reflects human engagement. Mutual gaze or "catching someone's eye" indicates the entrance into a relationship and may be consciously manipulated toward this end. Common examples are efforts to establish ocural contact with a waiter in a restaurant or to avoid establishing eye contact with a beggar on the street. (Grumet 2008[1983]: 125-126)

Definitely the stuff of phatics.

Kraut, Robert E. and Robert E. Johnston 2008[1979]. Social and Emotional Messages of Smiling. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 139-143.

Many nonhuman primates have a submissive facial display, called a grimace, a grin, or a silent bared-teeth face. The display resembles the human smile, and in all species in which it occurs, it seems to have the function of deflecting hostile behavior of more dominant animals (Hooff, 1962). Hooff hypothesized that the human smile is evolutionarily related to the chimpanzee's bared-teeth displays and serves the same functions of deflecting hostility and maintaining friendly contact. On the other hand, according to Hooff, laughter evolved independently and is related to the primate "play face."
If human smiling does serve a friendliness function, one would expect smiling to occur most in face-to-face interaction, especially where friendly intent is problematic or where social bonds are being established or renewed. The smiler's motivation may be genuine friendliness or an intent to establish friendly relations. Researchers in this ethological tradition have not been concerned with the emotions or feelings experienced by those doing the smiling. (Kraut & Johnston 2008[1979]: 140)

Smiling in this sense is also related to phatics, although neither Malinowski's or Jakobson's varieties, but rather something like "nonverbal phatics".

Results: The observations revealed that bowlers smiled often when they were socially engaged and looking at or talking to others. In contrast, bowlers smiled less after scoring a spare or strike. Similarly, bowlers rarely smiled while facing the pins or when bowling alone. However, they smiled frequently when facing their friends. Overall, bowlers appeared "happier" about their bowling success when their friends were present as compared to when they were alone. At the hockey game, fans smiled both when they were socially involved with others and after events favorable to their team occurred. Finally, pedestrians were much more likely to smile when talking to others than when alone. Pedestrians walking in pleasant weather were only slightly more likely to smile than those walking in unpleasant weather. Taken together, these suggest that smiling is much more motivated by social interaction and the desire to appear friendly than by internal feelings of happiness. (Kraut & Johnston 2008[1979]: 141)

E.g. smiling is more phatic (has a "social function") rather than emotive.

Farinelli, Lisa 2008. The Sounds of Seduction and Affection. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 160-168.

According to Givens, the seducer sees someone that he or she finds attractive, then works to grab the attention of the attractive person, and finally works to alleviate uncertainty between him- or herself and the target of the seduction. (Farinelli 2008: 161)

Appeal (conative function), and an information-theoretical approach (uncertainty, entropy).

So, the male seducer wants to appear strong at first and then tender. But what do females try to convey? The answer may surprise you. According to flirtation researcher Monica Moore (1995), "girls just wanna have fun" (p. 319). Moore planted herself on a college campus in a singles bar, a library, a snack bar, and a meeting. As time passed, she watched the strategic moves of women to grab male attention. What did she find? Women had fun! They laughed, usually tossing their heads back first. Sometimes they giggled, using a toned-down laugh. And sometimes they put their mouths by people's ears and whispered, a move intended to make the opposite sex's resistance weaken. But it isn't just college women who seem to know the secret to having fun when flirting: adolescent girl do, too. Moore (1995) observed adolescent girs in mixed sex settings and found that they, too, laughed, giggled, and whispered in their courtship behavior. Males might laugh, but when conveying interest in the opposite sex, usually tilting their heads or leaning forward (Grammer, 1990). (Farinelli 2008: 163-164)

So women tend to convey youthfulness (adelescent-ness?) when they flirt?

The communication of affection is a vital aspect of life, with people who give and receive affection reporting more mental and physical health (Floyd, 2006; Morman & Floyd, 1998). Floyd and Voloudakis (1999) defined affectionate communication as "the direct or indirect expression of affectionate feelings for the other" (pp. 342-434). As noted by Floyd and Ray (2003), although affection is certainly important in later stages of relationships, it can also play a significant role during the first encounters between two people because of "its ability to contribute to relational development" (p. 56). (Farinelli 2008: 164)

Affection and phatics? At this point it would appear than anything to do with human relations in terms of communication can be jotted down as phatics.

Jaworski, Adam 2008[1993]. The Power of Silence in Communication. In: Guerrero, Laura K. and Michael L. Hecht (eds.), The Nonverbal Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Third Edition. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 175-181.

Positive and Negative Values of Silence
When silence is recognized as a possible means of communication, it is typically considered to be able to express a variety of meanings and to perform a range of functions. A number of researchers have pointed out these properties of silence and have indicated that, on a number of planes, silence has two values: positive and negative. For example, Jensen (1973) discusses five functions of silence and assigns a positive and a negative value to each of them. The functions he proposes are as follows:

• A linkage function: Silence may bond two (or more) people or it may separate them.
• An affective function: Silence may heal (over time) or wound.
• A revelation function: Silence may make something known to a person (self-exploration) or it may hide information from others.
• A judgmental function: Silence may signal assent and favor or it may signal dissent and disfavor.
• An activation function: Silence may signal deep thoughtfulness (work) or it may signal mental inactivity.

Tannen (1985) discusses the "positive and negative valuation of silence" in regard to a number of communicative and social processes. Following Allen (1978), Tannen (1985) says "that silence serves two functions in the literature she [Allen] surveyed, one negative - a failure of language - and one positive - a chance for personal exploration" (p. 94). Furthermore, Tannen lists different types of situations in which silence may function in such an ambivalent manner: either as an expression of good or bad rapport and either as comfortable or clumsy communication. (Jaworski 2008[1993]: 179-180)

Here thi "linkage function" is phatic. Could the other four be compared to Jakobson's?

A similar ambivalence of silence is observed in the cultural communicative uses of silence in Japanese (Lebra, 1987). The value of silence in Japan derives from the conceptualization of the self as split into two parts: the inner and the outward. The inner is associated with truthfulness and is located symbolically in the heart and belly. The outward is associated with the face, mouth, and spoken words and with deception, disguise, falsity, and so on, whereas silence expresses inner truth. Reticent individuals are trusted as honest, sincere, and straightforward. Thus silence is an active state, while speech is an excuse for delaying activity. (Jaworski 2008[1993]: 180)

This is opposed to what we can read from Malinowski: "to a natural man, another man's silence is not a reassuring factor, but, on the contrary, something alarming and dangerous" (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 314).

DNF. I quit halfway through because this book is excruciatingly boring.