A former boyfriend of mine had a fairly regular habit of crossing
his arms in front of himself He is a muscular
build which only seems to intensify the appearance of his non-verbal message of
either being closed off to what those near him are communicating, or that he is
upset. I finally grew accustom to accepting
that often times he was not sending either message, it was just that he is
comfortable with his arms crossed. Like
some of us are most comfortable with our legs crossed.
I was pretty successful at reading him most of the time, but
there was one occasion at a social event where I misread his stance, didn't look to read the message his eyes were sending me, and we had a sizable
disagreement about it on the way home. I forgot
that non-verbal behaviors can have many different meanings (128). If I had stopped the behavior I was doing which was precipitating his being upset, looked in his eyes to read his facial message, and more importantly, just come out to ask him if he was upset I probably could have prevented one of our few major
challenges. .
To increase accuracy with which we interpret nonverbal
messages, it’s important to make the effort not to automatically stereotype the nonverbal
messages of others, no matter how well we seem to know them. It is also important not to assume that what
we are individually comfortable with pertaining to things like personal space
and/or cultural norms are what others are comfortable with. It is equally helpful when we are mindful of the
nonverbal messages we send others, whether we do so purposefully or not.
Hi Barbara,
ReplyDeleteI would not feel bad about miss reading the ex's crossed arms. I understand that is his comfy position, but if his face and body are not conveying an over-compensating open gesture it's easy to only see the bold arms crossed one. I am sure there were other factors that night that led up to the fight, but it’s not a total leap of faith to say that there are a lot of people in this world that have a hard time communicating, and he may just be one of them. I have taken a lot of communications classes and they all talk about how it takes two people to communicate. If he was not a good communicator, you may have been right to miss interpret his signals.
I agree that it is important to make an effort not to automatically stereotype the nonverbal communications of others. It can however be very difficult to accomplish with people you first meet. I have the same tendency to cross my arms in front of myself when I am in social situations. It can be construed as being closed off to others but most of the time it is because I am nervous or uncomfortable in the situation. I have noticed that it seems to be off putting to a lot of people even though I never intended to come across that way.
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