A juicy two cents on Social Interactions

As management styles evolved from an authoritative method to a team-oriented approach, having effective interpersonal skills has almost become a bare-minimum requirement to most types of work. Similarly, how we interact and understand other people can have quite an impact on life, from daily interactions with your coffee shop barrister, to sustaining a friendship or relationship.

Effective communications does not always have to involve words and speech; we learned to communicate non-verbally almost from the cradle. For example, we are extremely sensitive to the signals people make when they are in conversation with one another. There are precise rules about when we make eye contacts, how we time our responses to one another, how much distance we keep between each other, the signals which show that one person has finished speaking and it is now the other person’s turn to speak…and so on. These are completely unconscious rules and we hardly notice them, but we certainly find it disturbing if we are talking with someone who doesn’t conform to them. There are people who do not comply with these rules for one reason or another and they tend to be rather socially isolated because of their lack of social contact, which naturally resulted because most people would tend to avoid conversations that make them feel uncomfortable.

Equally important are listening skills and interpreting body language. As I mentioned in a previous post, as much as we think listening is an obvious and straightforward process, most of us are pretty poor listeners. We tend to hear what we expect others to say instead of what they actually said, which is rather different sometimes. Likewise, our body language unconsciously give away a lot of information about ourselves that cannot be disguised in words which indicate our emotional state or how we feel about something. For example,

• Crossing of the arms across the chest generally indicate putting up an unconscious barrier between oneself and others. If the situation is confrontational, it shows the the person is expressing opposition, especially if the person is leaning away from the speaker. On the other hand if the scenario is amicable, it can mean that the person is really pondering the issues being discussed.
• Though often a misleading gesture because we were taught from an early age to make eye contact when speaking, consistent eye contact can show positivity in the conversation. So vice versa, lack of eye contact generally signifies negativity, or if eye contact is made but mixed with crossing the arms, it demonstrates something is bothering the person.
• Similarly, averted gaze, touching the ear or scratching the chin can indicate disbelief. The attention of the person wanders when the eyes stare away from the speaker.
• Tilting the head to one side, or the eyes aimed towards the speaker but unfocused are signs of boredom.

These are some examples that are generally followed in the Western world, since body language varies between different cultures. Invariably, there is an equation derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e. like-dislike) called the Mehrabian’s Rule. Mehrabian found in his studies that there are 3 main elements in any face-to-face communication, the 3 V’s,

1. words (Verbal)
2. tone of voice (Vocal)
3. body language (Visual)

These 3 elements account differently towards how much we like the person we’re conversing with, 7% for words, 38% for tone of voice, and 55% for body language, thus the 7%-38%-55% Rule in which Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking. These 3 parts work to support each other in a message, and in the case where there is discrepancy between two of the elements, the receiver of the message might become irritated because he is receiving different cues that is pointing at different directions. For instance,

• Verbal: I am comfortable with you.
• Non-verbal: crossing of the arms, fiddling in the seat, averted gaze etc.

In cases as such, the listener will probably trust the more dominant forms of communication, which are non verbal. Note that this percentage rule applies only when there is ambiguity in the situation where there is an disproportionate influence of tone of voice and body language. This rule is specific to face-to-face communication of feelings and attitudes, because after all if words are only worth 7% of communication, it would take away the purpose of learning languages and everybody would just make sounds and gestures to “talk”.

This rambling about the subliminal ways we communicate can be tied be tied in with how we interact in the dating scene as well. People are innately curious, and although it is encouraged to be honest and sharing in relationships, oftentimes it can be a bad idea to reveal everything about yourself. Firstly it takes away the mysteriousness and excitement to find out more about the other person, secondly as the idiom goes when one talks too much it is more likely to make a mountain out of a molehill (exaggerating a problem). This description of the interaction between the sexes is just the tip of the iceberg; it certainly is another art form in itself to understand what attracts our attention and what repulses it. Although some may argue that such analysis of the interaction make attractions and relationship superficial, insincere and like a game, ultimately the purpose of such is to create opportunities so that we can learn to interact better to increase our chances at understanding each other.

~ by Timbits on Wednesday, January 23, 2008.