Unconscious communication

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Unconscious (or intuitive ) communication is the subtle, unintentional, unconscious cues that provide information to another individual. It can be verbal (speech patterns, physical activity while speaking, or the tone of voice of an individual) [1] [2] or it can be non-verbal (facial expressions and body language [2] ). Some psychologists instead use the term honest signals because such cues are involuntary behaviors that often convey emotion whereas body language can be controlled. [3] Many decisions are based on unconscious communication, which is interpreted and created in the right hemisphere of the brain. [4] The right hemisphere is dominant in perceiving and expressing body language, facial expressions, verbal cues, and other indications that have to do with emotion but it does not exclusively deal with the unconscious. [4]

Contents

Little is known about the unconscious mind or about how decisions are made based on unconscious communications except that they are always unintentional. There are two types of unconscious communications: intrapersonal and interpersonal.

Research has shown that human conscious attention can attend to 5–9 items simultaneously.[ citation needed ] All other information is processed by the unconscious mind. For example, the unconscious mind sometimes picks up on and relates non-verbal cues about an individual based on how they have arranged their settings such as their home or place of work.

Unconscious mind

Not much is known about the unconscious mind but it is believed to contain the biological instincts that humans act on every day, such as sex and aggression. [5] A person is completely unaware of what happens within the unconscious mind.

Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud made the concept of the unconscious popular; and he based most of his theories on psychoanalysis on the concept. According to Freud, the subconscious mind rests right below the conscious mind, and has easy access to the thoughts and feelings that are kept in this state – as opposed to the unconscious mind (access to which is, in Freud's view, impossible). Freud believed that we projected our unconscious emotions onto others. [4]

Intrapersonal

Intrapersonal communication is language use or thought internal to the communicator. It includes many mental activities such as thinking, calculating, planning, talking to one's self, internal monologue, and day-dreaming. [6] Intrapersonal communication affects how people perceive themselves: either in a negative or positive way. [6] Joseph Jordania hypothesized that intrapersonal communication was created to avoid silence because as social creatures we[ who? ] feel uncomfortable with extended periods of silence. [7] Intrapersonal unconscious communication is when dreams, previous experiences, or hypnosis affects a person's choices or experiences unconsciously. [2]

Interpersonal

Interpersonal communication includes message sending and message reception between two or more individuals. This can include all aspects of communication such as listening, persuading, asserting, non-verbal communication, and more. Interpersonal unconscious communication includes unintentional facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and speech patterns while interacting with another individual that the other individual interprets for their own knowledge. [2] Studies suggest that when presented with an emotional facial expression, participants instinctively react with movement in facial muscles that are mimicking the original facial expression. [8]

There are six different reasons for non-verbal communication: [9]

  1. Complementing: adding extra information to verbal communication
  2. Contradicting: the non-verbal messages contradict one's verbal messages
  3. Repeating: emphasize or clarify the verbal message
  4. Regulating: coordinate the verbal dialogue between people
  5. Substituting: when a non-verbal message is used in place of a verbal message
  6. Accenting: emphasizing a particular point in a verbal message


This system may have been evolutionarily evolved to hint to other people emotional cues. When a person uses one of the following points, as stated above (i.e. intonation, facial expression...) they may do so to regulate the emotion of one or more people. The subject or the contents of the message may be less of importance rather than the transmission of emotional cues itself.

Additionally, the manner of phrasing sentences and selection of words that the brain subconsciously generates are used as well to regulate other peoples emotions. Since a particular utilization of words may affect people differently such as "That painting is unattractive." and "That painting is ugly.", whereby the latter sentence will have a worse emotional impact than the former upon hearing. And here again the contents of the message are less of relevance than the actual emotional impact it will deliver.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intrapersonal communication</span> Communication with oneself

Intrapersonal communication is communication with oneself or self-to-self communication. Examples are thinking to oneself "I will do better next time" after having made a mistake or imagining a conversation with one's boss in preparation for leaving work early. It is often understood as an exchange of messages in which sender and receiver are the same person. Some theorists use a wider definition that goes beyond message-based accounts and focuses on the role of meaning and making sense of things. Intrapersonal communication can happen alone or in social situations. It may be prompted internally or occur as a response to changes in the environment.

Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Body language</span> Type of nonverbal communication

Body language is a type of nonverbal communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Although body language is an important part of communication, most of it happens without conscious awareness. In social communication, body language often complements verbal communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microexpression</span> Innate result of voluntary, involuntary, and conflicting emotional responses

A microexpression is a facial expression that only lasts for a short moment. It is the innate result of a voluntary and an involuntary emotional response occurring simultaneously and conflicting with one another, and occurs when the amygdala responds appropriately to the stimuli that the individual experiences and the individual wishes to conceal this specific emotion. This results in the individual very briefly displaying their true emotions followed by a false emotional reaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonverbal communication</span> Interpersonal communication through wordless (mostly visual) cues

Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact (oculesics), body language (kinesics), social distance (proxemics), touch (haptics), voice (paralanguage), physical environments/appearance, and use of objects. When communicating, we utilize nonverbal channels as means to convey different messages or signals, whereas others can interpret these message. The study of nonverbal communication started in 1872 with the publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. Darwin began to study nonverbal communication as he noticed the interactions between animals such as lions, tigers, dogs etc. and realized they also communicated by gestures and expressions. For the first time, nonverbal communication was studied and its relevance questioned. Today, scholars argue that nonverbal communication can convey more meaning than verbal communication.

Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously.

Kinesics is the interpretation of body communication such as facial expressions and gestures, nonverbal behavior related to movement of any part of the body or the body as a whole. The equivalent popular culture term is body language, a term Ray Birdwhistell, considered the founder of this area of study, neither used nor liked.

Albert Mehrabian is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is best known for his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages.

Dyssemia is a difficulty with receptive and/or expressive nonverbal communication. The word comes from the Greek roots dys (difficulty) and semia (signal). The term was coined by psychologists Marshall Duke and Stephen Nowicki in their 1992 book, Helping The Child Who Doesn't Fit In, to decipher the hidden dimensions of social rejection. These difficulties go beyond problems with body language and motor skills. Dyssemic persons exhibit difficulties with the acquisition and use of nonverbal cues in interpersonal relationships. "A classic set of studies by Albert Mehrabian showed that in face-to-face interactions, 55 percent of the emotional meaning of a message is expressed through facial, postural, and gestural means, and 38 percent of the emotional meaning is transmitted through the tone of voice. Only seven percent of the emotional meaning is actually expressed with words." Dyssemia represents the social dysfunction aspect of nonverbal learning disorder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oculesics</span> Study of nonverbal communication via the eyes

Oculesics, a subcategory of kinesics, is the study of eye movement, behavior, gaze, and eye-related nonverbal communication. The term's specific designation slightly varies apropos of the field of study. Communication scholars use the term "oculesics" to refer to the investigation of culturally-fluctuating propensities and appreciations of visual attention, gaze and other implicitly effusive elements of the eyes. Comparatively, medical professionals may ascribe the same appellation to the measurement of a patient's ocular faculty, especially subsequent a cerebral or other injury.

Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) is one of a number of theories that attempts to explain how individuals handle actual deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication. The theory was put forth by David Buller and Judee Burgoon in 1996 to explore this idea that deception is an engaging process between receiver and deceiver. IDT assumes that communication is not static; it is influenced by personal goals and the meaning of the interaction as it unfolds. IDT is no different from other forms of communication since all forms of communication are adaptive in nature. The sender's overt communications are affected by the overt and covert communications of the receiver, and vice versa. IDT explores the interrelation between the sender's communicative meaning and the receiver's thoughts and behavior in deceptive exchanges.

Non-verbal leakage is a form of non-verbal behavior that occurs when a person verbalizes one thing, but their body language indicates another, common forms of which include facial movements and hand-to-face gestures. The term "non-verbal leakage" got its origin in literature in 1968, leading to many subsequent studies on the topic throughout the 1970s, with related studies continuing today.

Body-to-body communication is a way of communicating with others through the use of nonverbal communication, without using speech or verbalization. It can include body language, facial expressions, and other bodily gestures in order to communicate with others without the need of verbal communication. Body-to-body communication accounts for postures, body language, physical touch, nonverbal language, and other bodily gestures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Posture (psychology)</span> Aspect of nonverbal communication

In humans, posture can provide a significant amount of important information through nonverbal communication. Psychological studies have also demonstrated the effects of body posture on emotions. This research can be traced back to Charles Darwin's studies of emotion and movement in humans and animals. Currently, many studies have shown that certain patterns of body movements are indicative of specific emotions. Researchers studied sign language and found that even non-sign language users can determine emotions from only hand movements. Another example is the fact that anger is characterized by forward whole body movement. The theories that guide research in this field are the self-validation or perception theory and the embodied emotion theory.

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.

Emotions in virtual communication are expressed and understood in a variety of different ways from those in face-to-face interactions. Virtual communication continues to evolve as technological advances emerge that give way to new possibilities in computer-mediated communication (CMC). The lack of typical auditory and visual cues associated with human emotion gives rise to alternative forms of emotional expression that are cohesive with many different virtual environments. Some environments provide only space for text based communication, where emotions can only be expressed using words. More newly developed forms of expression provide users the opportunity to portray their emotions using images.

Social Mirror Theory (SMT) states that people are not capable of self-reflection without taking into consideration a peer's interpretation of the experience. In other words, people define and resolve their internal musings through other's viewpoint. SMT's background is derived from the 1800s from concepts related to the study of public opinion and social interaction by Wilhelm Dilthey, the German philosopher and sociologist.

Mark G. Frank is a communication professor and department chair, and an internationally recognized expert on human nonverbal communication, emotion, and deception. He conducts research and does training on micro expressions of emotion and of the face. His research studies include other nonverbal indicators of deception throughout the rest of the body. He is the Director of the Communication Science Center research laboratory that is located on the North Campus of the University at Buffalo. Under his guidance, a team of graduate researchers conduct experiments and studies for private and government entities. Frank uses his expertise in communication and psychology to assist law enforcement agencies in monitoring both verbal and nonverbal communication.

Nonverbal influence is the act of affecting or inspiring change in others' behaviors and attitudes by way of tone of voice or body language and other cues like facial expression. This act of getting others to embrace or resist new attitudes can be achieved with or without the use of spoken language. It is a subtopic of nonverbal communication. Many individuals instinctively associate persuasion with verbal messages. Nonverbal influence emphasizes the persuasive power and influence of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal influence includes appeals to attraction, similarity and intimacy.

Motivation impairment effect (MIE) is a hypothesised behavioral effect relating to the communication of deception. The MIE posits that people who are highly motivated to deceive are less successful in their goal when their speech and mannerisms are observed by the intended audience. This is because their nonverbal cues, such as adaptor gestures, sweating, kinesic behaviors, verbal disfluencies, etc., tend to be more pronounced due to increased stress, cognitive load, and heightened emotional state. There is some disagreement regarding the MIE hypothesis, with a few nonverbal communication scholars arguing that deception should not be examined as separate for senders and receivers, but rather as an integral part of the overall process.

References

  1. ↑ Chandler, David. "Tuning in to unconscious communication". MIT News. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Ejim, Esther. "What is unconscious communication?". wiseGEEK. Conjecture Corporation. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
  3. ↑ Pentland, Alex. "The Impact of Unconscious Communication". Gallup Management Journal. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 Schore, Allen. "Projective Identification, Unconscious Communication, and the Right Brain". Courses for Mental Health Professionals. ContinuingEdCourses. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
  5. ↑ Malandro, Barker, and Barker, Loretta A., Larry L., and Deborah Ann (1989). Nonverbal Communication, 2nd ed. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. 1 2 Gill and Adams, David and Bridget (1989). ABC of Communication Studies. Nelson Thornes Ltd. pp. 94–95. ISBN   978-0-333-46757-2.
  7. ↑ Jordania, Joseph (2009). Times to Fight and Times to Relax: Singing and Humming at the Beginnings of Human Evolutionary History. pp. 272–277.
  8. ↑ Dimberg, U.; Thunberg, M (2000). "Unconscious facial reactions to emotional facial expressions". Psychological Science. 11 (1): 86–89. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00221. PMID   11228851. S2CID   67858.
  9. ↑ Malandro, Barker & Barker (1989). Nonverbal Communication, 2nd ed. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.

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