Welcome everyone to this lecture on Social Psychology.

I am Lynette da Silva, Fortes, Assistant Professor, Carmel College of Arts, Science and Commerce.
Today I will be covering the second year module of Social Psychology, a part of the third semester. The
course code of this is PSC 103 and the course title is social psychology - I. Today I'm also going to speak
about nonverbal communication, which is a part of unit 2, Understanding the social [Link] module
number is 9. The session outline for today's lecture is definition of nonverbal communication, means
through which nonverbal communication takes place and how we use nonverbal cues to interpret other
people's behavior.

After this lecture you will be able to define nonverbal communication, describe the process of nonverbal
communication and use nonverbal cues to interpret other people's behavior.

Nonverbal communication. The meaning of nonverbal communication is basically communication

Now the next thing that we are going to do is the channels of nonverbal [Link]
communication takes place in different ways. We're going to see some of the basic channels of nonverbal
communication.

The first one is facial expressions. When we say facial expression, we have Roman orator Cicero who
said the face is the image of the soul. According to him, human feelings and emotions are reflected in the
face and can be read there in specific expressions. There are five basic emotions which are represented
on the human face right from a nearly age, from the time we are born. These are the emotions, Which are
which we can depict, they are anger, fear, happiness, sadness and disgust.

Even though we have five different emotions which are represented on our faces, it does not imply that
human beings show only a small number of facial expressions. Emotions occur in many different
combinations like you can show joy and sorrow. You can show fear, anger. We're not only going to show
5 different emotions. The reactions of these emotions that you show either single or in combination they
are going to vary in strength. They're not going to be the same, as some are going to be stronger, some
are going to be a little less intense.

Facial expressions are also considered to be universal, i.e. if you go to any part of the world, the five
facial expressions are going to be recognized by anyone in the world, even though you do not know their
language or you do not speak their language. Even though you have cultural differences which exist with
respect to the precise meaning of facial expression, because we have different cultures that assign
different meanings to different expressions. But still we are going to understand the five basic
expressions. Expressions of emotions take for example the word lajja. This is in terms of the Indian
context. When we talk about lajja, you can express this particular emotion in different ways in different
situations. When you say lajja, it can be used when you are shy, this particular emotion can be used to
express this emotion of shyness. Then sometimes it is used to depict shame, sometimes guilt, sometimes
happiness,sometimes bliss etc.

We're going to see some research which is conducted by Matsumoto and Willingham, regarding the facial
expressions of different sports persons like athletes and all. They did a very interesting research
regarding athletes who compete for the Olympics. What they found in their study or before they
conducted the study, what they did was they took photographs of faces of different athletes. These
photographs were taken at various times. Some were taken when they were winning, some were taken
when they were losing a particular match, some were taken when they were receiving gold medals. Some
were taken when they were posing for photographers. What they found was that there are differences in
the expressions which are shown between the gold, silver and bronze medalist and when you compare
these expressions, the gold and the bronze medalist, they had the widest of the smiles. They were smiling
widely for the [Link] when you compare these people’s expression to the silver medalist, now the
silver medalist must be thinking in his head, if he or she had to only work a little harder, I would have got
the gold medal. So that is what was found in this study which was conducted by Matsumoto and his
colleagues.

Now we go to the second channel of nonverbal communication i.e. gazes and stares. Other’s feelings can
be learned from their eyes. You just look at the person’s eyes or the expression and you can learn a lot
about other people's feelings at that particular time. When you have a high level of gazing, what does it
mean? It means the person likes you or it shows a high level of friendliness. If a person is avoiding eye
contact when you look at this particular person, that means the person is unfriendly. The person doesn't
like us or maybe it is, the person is very, very shy and does not want to maintain eye contact. Then you
have a high level of eye contact. Another person looks at you continuously, that means the person likes
you or the person has positive feelings towards you. Now in eye contact, you also have another behavior
that is staring. All of us have gone through this. All of us have been stared at some time or the other.
When another person gazes at us, continuously maintaining eye contact regardless of what we do till we
are out of sight, that is called staring. Staring can be sometimes interpreted as a sign of hostility, i.e. a
cold stare and it is very, very disturbing for some people. Sometimes we terminate social interaction with
someone who is staring at us constantly and we are going to leave the scene. Suppose you are at the
bus stop and a stranger is continuously staring at you. You're going to feel very uncomfortable. We're
going to try to avoid this person. You don't want to look in the direction of the person, and sometimes you
might want to leave because it is making you very, very uncomfortable.

Now we'll see something about the Indian context. The Indian child is socialized to avoid direct eye
contact with elders when they are communicating. So if a young child looks into the eyes of his parents or
adults directly, it is considered to be a sign of disrespect. In adult to adult conversation, if one avoids
looking at each other’s eyes that means you're lying or you are evading the truth.

Now we'll go to the next channel of nonverbal communication, i.e. body language. Imagine a situation
wherein you were happy. Now imagine another situation wherein you were very sad, very upset. If you
think about what were your reactions, what was the movement of your body parts like your hands, your
facial expressions, your smile? How are they different in situations? They were totally different, when
you're happy it is different, when you're sad it is different.

Body language is basically the cues which are provided by the position, posture and movements of other
peoples bodies or body parts. Body language reveals a lot of other people's emotional state. We have
phrases like she adopted a very threatening posture. He greeted her with open arms. This suggests
different body orientations or postures indicating very contrasting emotional states. We also have a study
which was conducted by Aronoff and his colleagues. They found that actors, when they're depicting very
threatening or dangerous characters, they show very diagonal or very angular postures. You can say like
this and like that, so they show very angular postures when they are depicting very threatening or
dangerous characters. When actors are depicting warm sympathetic characters they are going to use
more of rounded postures. They're going to talk like this. So you also can imagine how you talk when
you're happy and how you talk when you're upset.

More specific information about others feelings is provided by gestures, which are called emblems.
Emblems are body movements which carry specific meanings in a given culture. We have one very
famous emblem in our culture in the Indian context, that is the namaste sign that we used to greet each
other; so much so, because of COVID-19, people all over the world instead of handshake, they're using
this namaste sign to greet each other. We have presidents of different countries who are using this
particular emblem in order to greet each other.

In India we have gestures and movements which provide different information depending which part of
the country one is in. In North India we have hands which are used as nonverbal gestures and South
India we have neck movements which are used for many gestures. Then you have different gestures
which have different meanings like a clenched fist, i.e. for men it symbolizes power and for women it
symbolizes loss of power or there is no hope of gaining this power.

The next one is touching. Imagine a situation wherein you're having a conversation with another individual
and this person touches you suddenly. How are you going to react now? Your reaction is going to depend
on several factors, like who is doing the touching, friend, stranger member of your own group or gender.
Then you have the nature of physical contact like brief, prolonged, gentle, rough. What part of the body is
touched and lastly the context, like business, social, doctor’s office.

There is a lot of evidence that touching is considered to be appropriate. It brings about positive reactions
in the person being touched. In the Indian context, touching feet of the elders, touching or massaging feet
by younger women is considered to be the notion of SEVA. Handshakes are also considered to be an
appropriate way of different cultures or people belonging to different cultures to touch strangers and they
reveal a lot of information about people. If you have a very firm, longer and vigorous handshake, it creates
a very favorable impression. They're more customary for men than women in India.
With that, we come to the end of the [Link] are some of the references and the books to be
followed.
Thank you very much.