A study of non-verbal behavior in an inmate population

Abstract

PSYCHOANALYTIC and other psychological schools have long held that non-verbal communication (NVC) is of vital importance in human interaction. Tomkins1~2 for example, has built a whole theory of personality around the exigencies of facial affect. As Abercrombie3 has noted: “We speak with our vocal organs, but we converse with our whole body”. While NVC can convey information, as in the American Sign Language for the deaf; and the verbal mode can sustain interpersonal relations, as in informal chat; normally NVC and verbal communications play contrasting roles.4 NVC is used to manage the immediate social situation. Verbal communication is used to convey information connected with shared tasks or problems. 4 It is usually gesture, posture, tone of voice, and facial expressions (NVC) which combine to communicate the emotional base from which words are being exchanged. For ‘example, Argyle et al. 5 have found that non-verbal cues were almost five times more powerful in effecting judgments of inferiority-superiority, than verbal ones. In this context, the old adage “actions speak louder than words” is lent some scientific support. For our study of non-verbal behavior among an inmate population, we received impetus and some direction from the same discipline that has stimulated burgeoning interest in NVC in social science: ethology. Ethology refers to the biological study of animal behavior and is often used, as in ethological, to indicate a focus on NVC. The zoologists who pioneered the field developed systematic techniques for describing and analyzing NVC in their studies of animals, who cannot talk. The productivity of the application of these techniques in human research is attested to by five major works which have been published during the past few years?1°