Riggio - Nonverbal Skills and Abilities (Chapter5)

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T he practice of nonverbal communication relies on a range of innateand developed foundational processes. One foundation underlyingthe use of nonverbal communication focuses on individual differences inthe abilities to communicate nonverbally. This ability, or skill, approachis akin to a personality perspective in that it focuses on individual differ-ences in the sending (encoding), receiving (decoding), and regulation(management) of nonverbal communication (for more on personality,see Gifford, this volume). In other words, people vary in their abilities toconvey nonverbal messages to others accurately, read others nonver-bal communications, and monitor and control their nonverbal displays.

The skill approach to nonverbal communication was advanced ina 1979 book edited by Robert Rosenthal, Skill in Nonverbal Com-munication: Individual Differences, and by the work of Rosenthal andcolleagues (1979) on the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS), ameasure of individual differences in the ability to decode nonverbalmessages. In Rosenthals Skill volume, Friedman (1979) argued that theskill approach to nonverbal communication represented three impor-tant shifts in conceptualizing the study of human social interaction. Thefirst was a shift from an emphasis on cognitive processes (e.g., attitudes,cognitive attributions) in interpersonal relations to a focus on emotionalprocesses. The second shift moved the focus from abstract traits to more

5NONVERBAL SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Ronald E. RiggioKravis Leadership Institute,Claremont McKenna College

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Administrator

AdministratorThe SAGE Handbook of Nonverbal Communication

Edited by: Valerie Manusov University of Washington School of Nursing Miles L. Patterson University of Missouri, St. Louis

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concrete abilities. The third shifts theconcept of nonverbal skill from a study ofinferred states to the study of process. Aclear example of this last shift is illustratedby research on expectancy effects (Harris &Rosenthal, 2005; Rosenthal & Jacobson,1968) that prompted scholars to try tounderstand the process of how positive(and negative) expectations are conveyed.

The work by researchers who were focus-ing on individual differences in nonverbalcommunication skill represented the ground-work for the highly popular concept ofemotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995,1998; Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Salovey &Mayer, 1990). Indeed, Friedman (1979)used the analogy of an intelligence test, withits right and wrong answers, when dis-cussing the measurement advantages of anonverbal skill approach to personality overtraditional traitlike measures. The samemeasurement distinction divides the emo-tional intelligence research community withits distinction between the abilities modeland the mixed model (Caruso, Mayer, &Salovey, 2002; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso,2000) for explaining and describing emo-tional intelligence. The abilities model ofemotional intelligence focuses on abilities toperceive, understand, use, and manage emo-tions, and it is represented by the MultifactorEmotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) and theMayer, Salovey, Caruso, Emotional Intellig-ence Test (MSCEIT) (Mayer, Salovey, &Caruso, 1997, 2002) measures.

Both these instruments are performance-based assessments of emotional abilities,many of which are central to skill in nonver-bal communication and, like most measuresof emotional intelligence ability, have correctand incorrect answers. The mixed model ofemotional intelligence combines emotionalskills and abilities with traitlike notionsof personality, which are represented byGolemans (1995, 1998) work and instru-ments like the Bar-On Emotional Quotient

Inventory (EQI; Bar-On, 1997). Its measuresof emotional intelligence resemble self-reportpersonality assessments typically.

Not unlike emotional intelligence, non-verbal skills are important for success in var-ious aspects of social life. Specifically, there isevidence that nonverbal skills and abilitiesare important in initiating and maintainingsocial interaction, developing interpersonalrelationships, and managing impressions.Nonverbal skills and abilities are also linkedto stress management and to success incareers in various business settings (Riggio,1992a, 2005). Importantly, nonverbal skills,unlike personality traits, can be learned andimproved. For example, research on decep-tion detection suggests that this decodingability improves by providing feedbackconcerning performance accuracy and withpractice (Zuckerman, Koestner, & Alton,1984; Zuckerman, Koestner, & Colella,1985), as well as by providing decodersinformation concerning more accurate non-verbal clues to deception (de Turck,Harszlak, Bodhorn, & Texter, 1990; see alsoPatterson, Foster, & Bellmer, 2001). There isalso evidence that nonverbal expressivenesscan be improved through training (Taylor,2002; see also Vrij, this volume).

Following the belief in the importance ofnonverbal skills for an array of outcomes,this chapter reviews theory and researchon the skill approach to nonverbal com-munication by focusing on three generaldomains of nonverbal skills and abilities:(1) nonverbal decoding skill, (2) nonverbalencoding skill, and (3) skill in regulatingnonverbal communication. In addition todefining these skill domains, the means ofmeasuring these nonverbal skills will bereviewed, as will research on the impactof each specific nonverbal skill domain onoutcomes in human social interaction.Finally, the research and application poten-tials of the nonverbal skills and abilitiesperspective will be discussed.


Nonverbal Skills and Abilities81

Skill in Nonverbal Decoding

Skill in nonverbal decoding involves sensitiv-ity to the nonverbal messages of others as wellas the ability to interpret those messages accu-rately. For the most part, others nonverbalmessages involve the communication of emo-tions, attitudes (e.g., liking or disliking), andcues of status or dominance (Mast, 2002).Skill in nonverbal decoding is a subset of thebroader construct of interpersonal sensitivity,which is defined as the ability to sense, per-ceive accurately, and respond appropriatelyto ones personal, interpersonal, and socialenvironment (Bernieri, 2001, p. 3).

A number of assessment instrumentshave been designed to measure individualdifferences in nonverbal decoding skill. Anexamination of the properties of these vari-ous skill instruments can help illustratethe conceptual and methodological issuesinvolved in studying nonverbal skills andabilities. The earliest and simplest instru-ments consisted of having respondentsattempt to decode photographs of basicfacial expressions of emotions. The BriefAffect Recognition Test (BART), developedby Ekman and Friesen (1974), is an exampleof this type of measure. Using a tachisto-scope, test takers are presented with a briefpresentation (a fraction of a second) of indi-viduals posing basic emotional expres-sions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust,fear, and anger) and must choose thecorrect emotion. A total accuracy scorerepresents the measure of nonverbal oremotional decoding skill. Matsumoto andcolleagues (2000) developed an improvedversion of this instrument, the Japanese andCaucasian Brief Affect Recognition Test(JACBART). A limitation of these instru-ments, however, is the focus on measuringaccuracy in decoding only static, visual cuesof distinct facial expressions of emotions,devoid of context.

Similarly, Buck and colleagues (Buck,1978, 2005; Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974;Buck, Savin, Miller, & Caul, 1972) devel-oped a technique to assess individual differ-ences in the ability to read subtle, natural(unposed) emotional expressions. Usingthis slide-viewing technique (SVT), thefaces of stimulus subjects are videotapedwhile watching emotion-evoking slides andtalking about them. Some of the slides aremeant to evoke positive emotions (a groupof laughing children, sleeping baby); othersevoke negative emotions (severe facialinjury, crying child with crutch). Others aresimply unusual or scenic slides. Respondentsview the silent video segments of stimulussubjects faces and try to determine whichslide the stimulus subject was viewing.Again, a total accuracy score is the measureof emotional or nonverbal decoding skill,but scores can also be obtained for accuracyat decoding specific emotions. Buck (1976)also developed a standardized instrument,the Communication of Affect ReceivingAbility Test (CARAT), from some of thevideo sequences. The slide-viewing techniquemeasures spontaneous, natural, dynamicemotional expressions and relies on video-tape segments rather than still photographs,providing more of the available nonverbalinformation.

The Diagnostic Analysis of NonverbalAccuracy (DANVA) assesses both visualcues of basic emotional expressions andauditory nonverbal cues (i.e., paralanguage)of emotion (Nowicki & Duke, 1994). TheDANVA is actually a collection of severalinstruments that includes both posed andspontaneous photographs of emotionalexpressions (including subtests measuringfacial expressions of emotions, emotionsexpressed via hand gestures, and emotionsexpressed via body posture). In addition,there are subtests that measure decodingof vocal cues, with audio segments of emo-tions being expressed while using the same


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content-standard sentence (I am going outof the room now but Ill be back later.). Inall cases, respondents choose the correctemotional expression (happy, sad,angry, or fearful). Scores are thenumber of correct choices on each subtest.There are both adult and child versions ofthe DANVA (Nowicki & Duke, 2001) aswell as a modified version of both measuresuseful in the field (Duke & Nowicki, 2005).The DANVA assesses sensitivity to bothvisual and auditory cues and increases therange of nonverbal expressions by includingthe ability to decode both posed and spon-taneous expressions of emotions. Researchshows that scores on the DANVA correlatewith greater overall social competence andbetter psychosocial adjustment (Nowicki &Duke, 2001).

Perhaps the most well-known measure ofnonverbal decoding skill is the aforemen-tioned PONS (Rosenthal et al., 1979). ThePONS consists of 220 brief, two-secondaudio and video clips of a woman enactingmultiple, emotionally laden scenes (e.g.,expressing jealous rage, asking for a favor,talking about the death of a friend). Bymasking the spoken words via electroniccontent filtering or randomized splicing ofthe audio track, only nonverbal cues are pre-sented. Eleven different channels (e.g., faceonly, body only, audio only, and all possiblecombinations) are used to assess specificaspects of nonverbal decoding. After eachclip, respondents are presented with a multi-ple-choice item and instructed to choose thecorrect portrayal. A total accuracy score rep-resents general sensitivity to nonverbal cues(Hall, 2001). There are also brief versions ofthe PONS that use only the audio or visualcues. The full-length PONS has been usedwidely in research and has demonstratedgood psychometric properties (Hall, 2001;Rosenthal, 1979). Not surprisingly, researchwith the PONS suggests that persons receiv-ing high scores are more interpersonally

aware than those receiving low scores (e.g.,Ambady, Hallahan, & Rosenthal, 1995;Hall & Carter, 1999). In addition, physi-cians receiving higher scores on the PONShad more satisfied patients than their col-leagues with low-sensitivity scores (DiMatteo,Friedman, & Taranta, 1979).

The PONS assesses a wide range of sen-sitivity to different channels of nonverbalcommunication: audio versus visual, therelatively rich nonverbal cues providedby facial expressions versus the more lim-ited range of cues emitted by the bodychannel. It also involves nonverbal cues dis-played in a number of enacted scenarios,such as helping a customer or talkingabout ones divorce, sometimes combiningthe nonverbal display of emotion with cuesof dominance-submission (e.g., talkingto a lost child or asking forgiveness).Other items involve reading cues thatrepresent complex blendings of emotionsand circumstances (e.g., returning a faultyitem to a store, talking about ones wed-ding), whereas some are seemingly devoidof emotional content (e.g., ordering foodin a restaurant). The breadth of thePONSs sampling of enacted scenes and themultiple channels of nonverbal cue displaysseem to capture the diversity of nonverbalbehavior, but this has led to low internalconsistency (see Hall, 2001) and can betime-consuming to implement. Other limi-tations of the PONS are its reliance on alone sender and the fact that the scenariosare posed rather than genuine enactmentsof emotions.

The Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT;Archer & Costanzo, 1988; Costanzo &Archer, 1989) is another measure of non-verbal decoding skill but one that focusesmore on reading nonverbal, verbal, and sit-uational cues to assess the ability to decodethe relationships among video interactants,their status or dominance in relationship toone another, their level of intimacy in the



relationship, and whether they are truthtelling or deceiving. Scenes include trying todetermine a childs parent (relationship),identifying the person of higher status or thewinner of a sporting event (status or domi-nance), or trying to determine the length ofa couples dating relationship (intimacy).The IPT consists of 30 brief video (with fullaudio) scenes of one, two, or more stimuluspersons, communicating with an inter-viewer, communicating with another personon the telephone, or in face-to-face commu-nication. After watching the scene, respon-dents choose the correct interpretation viaa multiple-choice question. There is also abrief version of the IPT (IPT-15, Costanzo& Archer, 1993) that removed some of theproblematic items from the longer version(e.g., items that were decoded at aboutchance or less than chance accuracy).

The IPT goes beyond nonverbal decod-ing and presents individuals being assessedwith both the audio and the video interac-tion between or among participants. Mostother measures of nonverbal decoding skilleliminate the verbal content to focus solelyon nonverbal (visual and paralinguistic)cues. The authors of the IPT suggest thatit is more closely aligned with the constructof social intelligence than with emotionalintelligence (Archer, Costanzo, & Akert,2001). Research with the IPT has beenprimarily focused on psychometric issues,although there is evidence that personsscoring high on the IPT are more sociallyaware and socially competent (Archer et al.,2001). In a study of college roommates,high scorers on the IPT had higher-qualityand more supportive relationships with oneanother than did low IPT scorers (Hodgins& Zuckerman, 1990).

The IPT has the advantage of using natu-ralistic interactions as opposed to the posedcommunications used in most other mea-sures of nonverbal decoding skill. More-over, rather than presenting a single

communicator, the IPT has many segmentswith two or more interactants, requiring amore sophisticated level of decoding skill,such as the ability to notice inconsistenciesbetween verbal and nonverbal channels or touse cues of dyadic rapport (Bernieri & Gillis,2001; Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991). It is alsolikely that correct decoding of IPT scenesrequires not just recognition of specific cues,as in decoding facial expressions of emotion,but also sophisticated interpretation ofcomplex verbal, nonverbal, and social cues.For example, one study found that whereasJapanese and American participants scoredabout the same in the visual-only conditionof the IPT-15, Japanese participants accu-racy in relation to Americans dropped offconsiderably when the vocal and verbal cueswere added (Iizuka, Patterson, & Matchen,2002). Furthermore, respondents who relyon common sense heuristics tend to makesystematic errors on the IPT, such as assum-ing that the older interactant (or the maleinteractant) has the higher status (Archer &Costanzo, 1988). An individual who hasgreat skill in nonverbal and situationaldecoding should be more likely to avoidthese errors.

A limitation of all the performancemeasures of nonverbal decoding skill is therelatively small sampling of what is obvi-ously a vast domain of nonverbal behavior.For instance, the BART and DANVA focusexclusively on emotional communication.Although the PONS assesses skill in decod-ing an array of nonverbal messages involvingcues of emotion, status, and relationship, it islimited to one sender; the IPT has multiplesenders, but it is brief (15 or 30 items) andsuffers from low internal consistency (Hall,2001). The extremely low internal consis-tency coefficients (KR20s of .38 and .52 forthe brief and long versions of the IPT) sug-gest that the IPT may indeed be assessing abroad domain of interpersonal skills. Finally,performance measures of nonverbal skill are


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time-consuming to develop and often diffi-cult to administer.

Another approach to measuring nonver-bal skill involves the use of self-reportmethods. Self-report methods offer theadvantages of sampling across a broadrange of nonverbal skill-related areas, andthey are relatively easy to administer (Riggio& Riggio, 2001). The earliest publishedattempt to assess nonverbal decoding skillvia self-reports was by Zuckerman andLarrance (1979) with their PerceivedDecoding Ability (PDA) and PerceivedEncoding Ability (PEA) tests. As part of alarger social skill model, Riggios SocialSkills Inventory (SSI; Riggio, 1986, 1989,2005; Riggio & Carney, 2003) uses self-report techniques to measure two decodingabilities, emotional sensitivity (the ability todecode emotions and other nonverbal cues)and social sensitivity (the ability to decodeand understand social situations, socialroles, and social scripts). Unfortunately,measuring nonverbal decoding skill via self-reports has demonstrated only limited suc-cess. For example, correlations betweenself-report measures of decoding skill andperformance measures have been positivebut low (typically below .20). The emo-tional sensitivity subscale of the SSI, how-ever, has had a slightly stronger relationshipwith decoding scores on the DANVA(decoding faces) and a similar decodingfacial expressions subtest of the MultifactorEmotional Intelligence Test (correlations of.22 and .26, respectively; Riggio & Carney,2003). In addition, self-reported emotionalsensitivity is correlated substantially withrelevant self-reported social behaviors,including the size and closeness of socialnetworks (Riggio, 1986; Riggio, Watring,& Throckmorton, 1993).

Skill in decoding nonverbal communica-tion is considered a very important compo-nent of nonverbal ability. It is aligned closelywith important personality characteristics,

particularly empathy and being other-oriented (Losoya & Eisenberg, 2001).Nonverbally sensitive individuals may alsobe more prone to emotional contagioneffects, vicariously experiencing othersemotions (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson,1994). Indeed, there is a .48 correlationbetween the emotional sensitivity scaleof the SSI and a self-report measure of emo-tional contagion (Riggio & Carney, 2003).This suggests that although nonverbal sen-sitivity is considered to be an importantcomponent of global nonverbal skill orcompetence, it is possible to be too nonver-bally sensitive. Davis (1983, 1994), in hismultidimensional model of empathy, con-ceptualizes one aspect of other-orientedsensitivity as taking anothers perspective orshowing some empathic concern withothers emotional states. A different formof empathy, however, is labeled personaldistress, suggesting emotional contagioneffects. Taken to an extreme, nonverbalsensitivity may cause people to experiencesome personal distress. It is important toemphasize that when considering globalskill or competence in nonverbal and emo-tional communication, an individual needsto also possess skills in decoding, encoding,and regulating communication and emo-tional processes (see Riggio, 1986; Riggio& Carney, 2003).

DETECTION OF DECEPTION

The ability to detect deception accu-rately is a particular nonverbal decodingskill. Because of its complexity, the abilityto detect deception is rare, with a very smallpercentage of the general population ableto detect deception much above chancelevels (Ekman, OSullivan, & Frank, 1999;Malone & DePaulo, 2001; Vrij, this vol-ume). Yet some individuals seem to be par-ticularly successful at detecting deception



and are labeled wizards (OSullivan,2005). These rare individuals are particu-larly skilled at reading nonverbal cues,although they also possess a number ofother skills and qualities critical for detect-ing deception. These include the ability tonotice inconsistencies in and between non-verbal and verbal cues, a strong motivationto both observe and analyze human behav-ior, and an ability to avoid the systematiccognitive biases that hamper the ability todetect deception successfully in the generalpopulation (OSullivan, 2005).

A great deal of research suggests whydecoding of deception is such a difficultskill. First, there is a trusting bias: a ten-dency to believe that others communica-tions are more likely to be truthful thandeceptive (Ekman, 1985; Riggio, 1992b).This manifests itself in proportionately morejudgments of truth as opposed to lie inmost experimental investigations of decep-tion detection. Second, people may not beable to hone their deception detection skillsif they receive inadequate feedback concern-ing whether someone was lying or telling thetruth (i.e., in everyday life, we may neverfind out for sure if a friend or relation waslying to us or not). People may also rely toomuch on stereotypical cues of deception,such as an inability to maintain eye contact,nervous fidgeting, and slow, staccato speechpatterns, cues that may be unrelated toactual deception (DePaulo et al., 2003).Furthermore, because deceivers are alsoaware of these stereotypical deception cues,they may take steps to ensure that they mon-itor and control these known clues todeception. For example, in one study, par-ticipants engaged in significantly greatereye contact when deceiving as comparedwith truth telling, presumably in an effortto look more honest (Riggio & Friedman,1983).

There is some evidence that nonverbaldecoding abilities, including deception

detection, are correlated, although themagnitude of relationships is modest. Forexample, the ability to detect one kind oflie is related to detecting the accuracyof another form of lie (Frank & Ekman,1997). In addition, the ability to detectdeception is slightly positively related tothe ability to decode nonverbal cues ofemotion (Buller & Burgoon, 1994; Malone& DePaulo, 2001). Likewise, a review ofintercorrelations among standardized per-formance measures of decoding skill (e.g.,PONS, IPT, CARAT) shows that there arepositive relationships among the tests, butthey are quite modest (Hall, 2001). Thisresult suggests, perhaps, that nonverbaldecoding skill is complex and multifaceted,consisting of multiple abilities that aresomewhat related to, but considerably inde-pendent from, one another.

Skill in Nonverbal Encoding

Nonverbal encoding skill, also referred to asnonverbal expressiveness, involves the abil-ity to send nonverbal messages to othersaccurately. Typically, performance mea-sures of individual differences in nonverbalencoding consist of videotaping participantswhile they are sending emotional expres-sions spontaneously or while posing themon cue. For example, Bucks (2005) slide-viewing technique was reviewed earlier as amethod of assessing nonverbal decodingskill. But the slide-viewing technique canalso be used to measure individual differ-ences in the spontaneous encoding ofemotions: A measure of spontaneous encod-ing ability consists of the percentage ofjudges who can identify the emotion beingportrayed correctly via facial expressionswhile the sender is viewing or discussing theemotion-evoking slide. More frequently,however, participants are asked to pose an


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emotion with either a facial expression orfacially and vocally while reciting somecontent-standard sentence or phrase. Inother instances, encoders may be asked topose a positive or negative affect (i.e., likingor disliking) toward a person or object.Scores of nonverbal encoding ability consistof the percentage of judges who identifycorrectly the posed emotion or affect (e.g.,Zaidel & Mehrabian, 1969; Zuckerman,Lipets, Koivumaki, & Rosenthal, 1975).

Unlike measures of nonverbal decodingability, there are no standardized observation-based tests of nonverbal encoding abilityreadily available. Instead, researchers haveeither used the slide-viewing technique orcreated some form of posed nonverbalencoding task to measure individual differ-ences. For example, in a series of studies,nonverbal encoding ability was measuredby having participants pose each of sixbasic emotional expressions to a video cam-era while saying content-standard sentences(Friedman, Prince, Riggio, & DiMatteo,1980). Persons scoring high on posed emo-tional encoding were evaluated as betterspeakers and were viewed as more likablethan individuals scoring low on encodingability (Riggio & Friedman, 1986). Goodencoders of emotion were also more suc-cessful deceivers than were poor encoders(Riggio & Friedman, 1983).

Assessment of nonverbal or emotionalencoding ability is a costly and time-consuming procedure that involves the use ofmultiple judges to obtain reliable scores con-cerning the individual senders accuracy. Asa result, researchers have turned to othermethods to measure emotional encodingskill and have had good success usingself-report means to assess nonverbal oremotional expressiveness. Zuckerman andLarrances (1979) PEA measure, mentionedearlier, was the first such published measure.The Affective Communication Test (ACT;Friedman et al., 1980) has been used widely

as a measure of nonverbal encoding skill,although it is related more to spontaneousemotional encoding than to posed sendingof emotions (Riggio & Riggio, 2005).Personality scholars have shown renewedinterest in emotional expressiveness in thepast decade, and several newer self-reportmeasures have been developed, including theBerkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ;Gross & John, 1995) and the EmotionalExpressivity Scale (EES; Kring, Smith, &Neale, 1994). All these measures are rela-tively brief, self-report instruments rangingfrom 13 to 17 items. For a review of thesemeasures, see Riggio and Riggio (2005).

Whereas the PEA did not correlate sig-nificantly with either posed or spontaneousemotional encoding tasks (Zuckerman &Larrance, 1979), the other self-reportmeasures (ACT, BEQ, and EES) have allcorrelated positively and significantly withemotional encoding tasks (Friedman &Riggio, 1999; Friedman et al., 1980;Gross & John, 1995; Kring et al., 1994).Moreover, persons scoring high on self-report measures of nonverbal or emotionalencoding ability make more positive firstimpressions (Friedman, Riggio, & Casella,1988), appear more attractive to others(DePaulo, Blank, Swaim, & Hairfield,1992), are more socially self-confident andless lonely and shy (Friedman et al., 1980;Riggio, 1986), and report larger and moresupportive social networks (Friedman et al.,1980; Riggio, 1992a) than do individualsscoring low on self-report measures ofemotional or nonverbal expressiveness.

There is specific evidence of the tiebetween encoding abilities. In one of theearliest studies of the emotional contagionprocess, for instance, Friedman and Riggio(1981) found that nonverbally expressiveindividuals, as measured by the ACT,were able to infect others with their emo-tions through purely nonverbal channels.Nonverbal expressiveness has also been



implicated in the ability to deceive success-fully, but the relationship is complex. Non-verbally expressive individuals, as measuredby a posed emotional encoding task, weresomewhat more successful at deceivingothers, but much of their success wasrelated to a demeanor bias. That is, theysimply looked more honest and truthfulthan nonexpressive persons regardless ofwhether they were truth telling or lying.Presumably, this was due to their tendencyto be animated and expressive and to avoidnervous cues that are stereotypically asso-ciated with deception (Riggio & Friedman,1983).

Nonverbal or emotional expressivenesshas often been either equated with the per-sonality trait of extraversion or considereda component of it. Consistent evidence sug-gests, however, that although expressive-ness and extraversion are related, theyare different constructs (Friedman, 1983;Riggio & Riggio, 2002). The fact that non-verbal expressive ability is most often mea-sured via self-report instruments (withshared method variance inflating the corre-lations between measures of expressivenessand measures of extraversion) furtherdrives the misconception that expressive-ness is just extraversion.

The ability to convey nonverbal mes-sages to others, particularly the sending ofemotional messages, is a critical skill forsocial success, and a fundamental compo-nent of the larger construct of communica-tion competence (see Greene & Burleson,2003). Performance-based measurement ofnonverbal encoding skill is a difficult task;therefore, it has not received as much atten-tion as nonverbal decoding ability. Instead,researchers have relied on self-report mea-sures of nonverbal expressiveness. Whereasevidence suggests that the ability to expresspositive emotions creates more favorableimpressions and can positively influenceothers moods, the expression of negative

affect, such as the spontaneous expressionof anger or dislike, can have equally nega-tive outcomes (see Burgoon & Bacue,2003). Therefore, it is important to con-sider the monitoring and regulation ofexpressive displays when discussing compe-tence in nonverbal skills and abilities.

Skill in NonverbalRegulation and Control

Skill in nonverbal communication involvesmore than just encoding and decoding abil-ities. The ability to regulate and controlones nonverbal communication is alsoa key component of what it means tobe nonverbally skilled (Riggio, 1986).Specifically, the ability to regulate both theexperience of emotions and the expressionof those emotions has received a great dealof attention (e.g., Eisenberg, Champion, &Ma, 2004; Gross, 1998). People learn tosuppress the expression of emotions, whichis likely responsible for the consistentdifferences in emotional expressivenessdue to culture (Ekman & Friesen, 1969;Matsumoto, 2001, this volume; Matsumoto& Yoo, 2005; but see Fridlund, 1994, thisvolume, for an alternative view) and gender(Hall, Carter, & Horgan, 2000; Riggio &Carney, 2003). Regulating or managingemotions is also one of the core elements inthe abilities model of emotional intelligence(Mayer et al., 2000). Gross (2001) suggeststhat regulation of emotion can involvetwo processes: reappraisal and suppression.Reappraisal involves altering both the expe-rience and the expression of an emotion,whereas suppression involves the inhibitionof emotionally expressive behavior. Ineither case, the nonverbal communicationof emotion can be controlled and can thusbe considered an ability.

Snyders (1974, 1987) research on self-monitoring represents some of the earliest


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work attempting to measure control overnonverbal communication. By definition,self-monitoring is, in part, the ability tomonitor, regulate, and control ones non-verbal displays. Yet self-monitoring alsoinvolves being attentive to others nonverbalcues and an ability to adjust ones ownexpressive behavior to try to fit in tosocial situations. It has been argued, basedon factor analyses of Snyders (1974) self-monitoring scale, that the SMS also mea-sures elements of nonverbal encoding anddecoding skill (Riggio & Friedman, 1982).Indeed, a key validation study conductedby Snyder (1974) involved correlatingSMS scores with posed emotional encodingand decoding tasks. Positive relationshipsbetween SMS and emotional encoding anddecoding success suggest that self-monitoringcould represent a measure of global socialskill or competence. Factor analyses of theoriginal SMS demonstrated separate factorsthat measured other-directedness, a ten-dency to focus on others behavior, likelya prerequisite for nonverbal decodingskill, and extraversion-acting, a factor thatinvolves not only control or communicationbut also a form of social acting skill thatwould be related to posed nonverbal encod-ing skill (Briggs & Cheek, 1988; Briggs,Cheek, & Buss, 1980). These results suggestthat global nonverbal and social skills orcompetence is composed of encoding,decoding, and regulatory skills, inspiring amore general, multidimensional model ofnonverbal and social skills (Riggio, 1986,1989; Riggio & Carney, 2003).

In this multidimensional nonverbal andsocial skill model, emotional control (EC) isone of three core elements of nonverbal skillthat involves the ability to control and regu-late emotional and nonverbal displays. Theother two elements in this model, discussedearlier, are emotional or nonverbal encod-ing (labeled emotional expressivity) anddecoding (labeled emotional sensitivity).

Individuals scoring high on EC, for example,are able to stifle the expression of felt emo-tions or cover the display of the felt emo-tion with another emotional mask.Tucker and Riggio (1988) found that indi-viduals scoring high on EC were more diffi-cult to decode in a spontaneous emotionalsending using the slide-viewing technique,suggesting that they monitor and stifle theiremotional expressions. Research also sug-gests that persons with high levels of EChave greater comfort speaking before largeaudiences, performed better in a discussion-oriented problem-solving group, and hadmore formal acting experience than personslacking EC (Riggio, 1986; Riggio, Riggio,Salinas, & Cole, 2003).

Another measure of the ability to controlnonverbal and emotional communicationis the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire(ERQ), a 10-item self-report instrument withsubscales measuring the ability to regulateemotions via reappraisal or suppression(Gross & John, 2003). Research using theERQ suggests that there are psychologicallyhealthy and unhealthy means to regu-late and control the expression of emotion.For example, reappraisal-based EC or regu-lation leads to more positive outcomes (e.g.,positive emotions, well-being), whereas con-trolling the expression of emotion via sup-pression leads to more negative outcomes.Riggio and Zimmerman (1991) found thatpersons scoring high on SSI-EC reportedusing social support strategies less to copewith stress, whereas persons scoring high onemotional expressiveness and sensitivityreported having larger supportive social net-works and making greater use of social sup-port strategies to cope with stress.

The ability to control strong emotionscan be an asset in formal social settings,such as in public speaking, in the work-place, and in positions of authority whenunder crisis or stress, where an individualwould not want to arouse others anxiety



levels further by nonverbally conveying hisor her own anxiety and fears. Similarly, reg-ulation and suppression of anxiety shouldlead high-control individuals to be moreeffective deceivers, although this was notthe case in a study of deception that did notinvolve strong emotions or arousal (Riggio,Tucker, & Throckmorton, 1988). Bonannoand colleagues (2004) argue that abilitiesto both enhance and suppress emotionalexpression lead to greater flexibility andpositive psychosocial outcomes. This sug-gests that having a broad repertoire of non-verbal skills is most important for socialeffectiveness and psychosocial well-being.

Riggio and colleagues (Perez & Riggio,2003; Riggio, 1986; Riggio & Carney,2003) have argued, however, that whereaspossession of high levels of nonverbal andsocial skills is important for social successand personal adjustment, there needs to bea balance among the skills. For example,being overly emotionally expressive with-out possessing the ability to regulate andcontrol that expressiveness is typically mal-adaptive. Emotionally expressive individu-als who lack the ability to regulate thesedisplays may appear emotionally unstableand out of control. Similarly, beingoverly sensitive to nonverbal cues can makeone susceptible to emotional contagionprocesses as discussed earlier. Perez, Riggio,and Kopelowicz (in press) found a connec-tion between lack of balance among nonver-bal and social skills and poor psychologicaladjustment in clinical patients.

The Skill Approach toNonverbal Communication:Unrealized Potential

There is more to nonverbal skill than justthe ability to encode and decode nonver-bal messages. Monitoring, regulation, and

control of nonverbal communicationrepresent a set of complex skills that are par-ticularly important for effective interper-sonal communication. Indeed, each of thethree areas of nonverbal skill just revieweddecoding, encoding, and controlare eachinternally complex and multifaceted. Thereis still a great deal of research to be done tounderstand the domain of nonverbal com-munication skills fully.

The study of nonverbal communicationhas been dominated by the study of func-tions and process. Early research focusedprimarily on the meaning of various non-verbal behaviors, such as the communi-cative function of facial expressions (e.g.,Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972), ges-tures (Birdwhistell, 1970), posture (e.g.,Mehrabian, 1969), touch (e.g., Henley,1977), and vocalics (e.g., Argyle, 1999).Later research used the lens model per-spective (Brunswik, 1956) to try to under-stand the process by which, for example, asender uses nonverbal cues to affect, per-suade, or influence others or to understandthe person perception process (see DePaulo& Friedman, 1998).

There has been comparatively littleattention given to individual differencesin the ability to communicate nonver-bally. Friedman (1979) saw great potentialin using the concept of skill in nonverbalcommunication to reframe thinking aboutindividual differences from the traditionaltrait approach to more objectively measuredskills and abilities. More than 25 years ago,he predicted that the next few years willlikely see a proliferation of measures of non-verbal sensitivity, nonverbal expressiveness,deceptive abilities, rhythm, expressive style,channel preference, self-monitoring, and thelike (Friedman, 1979, p. 23). In actuality,there have been relatively few measures ofnonverbal skill (most of which are reviewedin this chapter), and these are not usedwidely. Research on individual differences is


90Foundations

still dominated by traditional personalitymeasures, with Big Five measures used inthe majority of investigations. Indeed, a lit-erature search turned up more than 1,000publications with either Big Five orNEO (the primary Big Five scale) in thetitle as opposed to 35 publications withnonverbal skill or nonverbal ability.

Admittedly, performance measures ofnonverbal skill are extremely costly todevelop, are time-consuming to administer,and sample only a limited slice of nonver-bal behavior. The last characteristic may notbe much of a problem, however, becausethin slices can be quite informative (Ambady,LaPlante, & Johnson, 2001; Ambady &Rosenthal, 1992). It was, in fact, the timeand costs issue that led this author to thedevelopment of self-report measures of non-verbal and social skill. These measures weresupposed to be a stopgap until we coulddevelop a battery of performance-basedmeasures assessing the broad range of non-verbal skills and abilities suggested by non-verbal communication research. Because theself-report measures seemed to do the joband took on a life of their own, the stan-dardized performance measures were neverpursued fully. The technology exists,however, to have persons pose or sponta-neously express emotions while being video-taped and then to have those videotapedexpressions compared with templates ofcorrect prototype emotional expressions.Similar technology could be used to assessperformance-based abilities to regulate andcontrol emotional expressions.

A similar situation exists in person-nel selection. Assessment centers offera performance-based alternative to tradi-tional pencil-and-paper testing in evaluat-ing job applicants (usually for managerialpositions). The assessment center requiresapplicants to engage in a variety of work-related simulations, such as making a for-mal presentation, coaching a subordinate,

participating in a group discussion, andother exercises, many of which are designedto assess, in part, communication andpeople skills (Howard, 1997; Thornton,1992). Trained observers then evaluatethe participants performance by rating, forexample, their communication skills, rap-port with others, and decision making.There is evidence that possession of nonver-bal and social skills does predict perfor-mance on many assessment center tasks(Riggio et al., 1997). Yet the question ofwhether it is worth the trouble to get theseexpensive and time-consuming perfor-mance-based assessments is one that paral-lels the work on measuring nonverbal skillsand abilities.

The recent explosion of interest in emo-tional intelligence has fueled the develop-ment of measures, particularly those ofMayer, Salovey, and associates (Mayer et al.,1997, 2002), that assess components of non-verbal skill. These researchers are, in manyways, reinventing the decades-old measuresof nonverbal decoding skill and encounter-ing many of the same problems that plaguedthe nonverbal communication scholars(Ciarrochi, Chan, Caputi, & Roberts, 2001).Many emotional intelligence researchers,however, are simply opting for the easier toadminister self-report measures. Despitetheir conceptual similarity, the two lines ofresearchskill in nonverbal communica-tion and emotional intelligencehave rarelycrossed. Perhaps, this will change withincreasing recognition that both are focusingon the same phenomena.

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O f the many different research perspectives on the fundamentals ofnonverbal communication, one of the most taken for granted isthe relationship between verbal communication and co-occurring non-verbal acts. Most researchers assume that conversational gestures (e.g.,illustrators) and some facial actions (e.g., eyebrow emphasizers or aquizzical expression) contribute to the talk-in-progress. This chapter is the

6NONVERBAL AND VERBALCOMMUNICATION

Hand Gestures and Facial Displays as Partof Language Use in Face-to-Face Dialogue1

Janet Beavin BavelasUniversity of Victoria

Nicole ChovilIndependent Researcher and Education Consultant

Authors Note: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ofCanada has generously provided long-term support for the program ofresearch from which this model developed. We owe a continuing debt to dis-cussions with members of the research team over the years and a particulardebt to Jennifer Gerwings survey of recent gesture research.


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next step in a developing model on thecontribution of nonverbal communicationto face-to-face dialogue (proposed originallyin Bavelas & Chovil, 2000). In additionto drawing on the evidence so far, we willsuggest new directions for research in thisrelatively neglected area. Specifically, we willpropose four theoretical propositions regard-ing the subset of nonverbal acts that functionas part of language use in face-to-face dia-logue and will discuss the logical and empir-ical evidence for each. We hope that thereader will agree that this area of researchand theory is at an exciting point, withenough evidence to be promising but withmany more questions and possibilities stillopen for investigation.

Historical andTheoretical Context

Researchers who focus on face-to-face dia-logue have long noted that some nonverbalbehaviors can work closely with words,prosody, and each other in ordinary conver-sation. In our view, the beginning of a sys-tematic theory was in 1955, with the highlyinfluential, although mostly unpublished,Natural History of an Interview project (cf.Leeds-Hurwitz, 1987; McQuowan, 1971).We can then trace a line of proponents of anintegrated approach in many disciplines,including Birdwhistell (1966), Scheflen(1968), Ekman and Friesen (1969), Kendon(1972, 1980), Blurton-Jones (1972), Pike(1972), Weiner, Devoe, Rubinow, andGeller (1972), Slama-Cazacu (1976), Duncanand Fiske (1977), Poyatos (1980), Scherer(1980), Linell (1982), McNeill (1985),Goodwin and Goodwin (1986), Sanders(1987), Leeds-Hurwitz (1989), Chovil (1989),Bavelas, Black, Chovil, and Mullett (1990,chap.6),Fridlund(1991a),StreeckandKnapp(1992), Clark (1996, chap. 6), and Jones andLeBaron (2002). These authors have useda variety of terms for verbal-nonverbal

combinations of words, prosody, handgestures, facial displays, or gaze, includingmixed syntax (Slama-Cazacu, 1976), com-prehensive communicative act (Linell, 1982),multichannel process (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1989;Sanders, 1987; Scherer, 1980), composite sig-nal (Clark, 1996; Engle & Clark, 1995), inte-grated message (Bavelas & Chovil, 2000),and, most recently, multimodal communica-tion (e.g., Engle, 2000), although the lastterm often includes computers or objects aswell as human actions.

The broader context of the approach dis-cussed in this chapter is our interest in theunique features of face-to-face dialogue as aprimary mode of language use. Changes inconceptions of language itself have been aboon for conversational hand gestures andfacial displays. Historically, when linguistsand psycholinguists conceptualized languageas an abstract entity or idealized it as writtentext or formal monologues, all nonverbalacts were either irrelevant or a completelyseparate communication channel. Recentinterest in how interlocutors ordinarily uselanguage has led to an emphasis on conver-sation and, eventually, to face-to-face dia-logue. Indeed, many authors (e.g., Bavelas,1990; Bavelas, Hutchinson, Kenwood, &Matheson, 1997; Clark, 1996, pp. 810;Fillmore, 1981; Goodwin, 1981; Levinson,1983; Linell, 1982) have proposed that face-to-face dialogue, rather than written text orformal monologue, is the fundamental orbasic site of language use, for at least threereasons: (1) face-to-face dialogue is arguablythe first format for human language in evo-lutionary terms; (2) in typical development,it is the individuals first language; and (3) itis the most common format for language usein everyday life.

More specifically, we have proposed (e.g.,Bavelas, 1990; Bavelas & Chovil, 2000;Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002; Bavelas,Hutchinson, Kenwood, & Matheson, 1997)that there are two features of dialogue that,in combination, do not occur in other forms


Riggio - Nonverbal Skills and Abilities (Chapter5)

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