Introduction to Profiling: The Process of Reading of Nonverbal Signs

Abstract

see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl? (...) It is simplicity itself... My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavery. Conan Doyle: A Scandal in Bohemia Nonverbal codes can be divided into two large groups. In the group of representation codes the most developed system is verbal which is associated with formal characteristics such as the ones referring to the environment of transmission (personal meeting, audio and audio-visual media, etc.) as well as conventions related to their social use. The receiver decodes them by these means. The channel of transmission for presentation codes is the human body. The basic types are behavior codes and the learned ones (e.g. body movement), commercial codes (e.g. clothing) and genetic body codes (e.g. facial structure, hair color). The latter one is the source of information for automatic stereotypes that play an important role in rapid reading and the forming of first impressions.The codes from these three categories may express four types of indicators:a. indicators of interpersonal relationship,b. indicators that reflect social class,c. indicators of identity,d. indicators of expression.Depending on the type of indicators we may define groups of analysis and reference, with which we can decode and interpret the messages sent.1A hybrid field of verbal and nonverbal communication is kinesthetic, which analyses the movements of the body during the creation of speech. In the process of reading the words from the lips it is important to follow the movements of the lips, neck, thorax which accompany speech, but sometimes we interpret a picture or a silent film in a similar way (e.g. determination of sonority), an effort or work process (e.g. rhythmic shouts or their encoding into a work tune) or mass events (e.g. the behavior of sports fans).Communication of the content is taken over by more developed communication systems which are characteristic to humans, such as writing or language. Therefore, we are going to follow and interpret nonverbal messages with less awareness than verbal language, and this is true both for the communicating person and the receiver.2 Since nonverbal messages represent a less controlled way of communication, they reveal certain attitudes or feelings which the communicating individual does not want to show. Nonverbal chatter represents this additional information, among others the situation when a person is telling the truth or lying.3 It has a great importance in psychiatric treatment4, in the case of compen sated patients (who do not present symptoms) who try to mask their anxiety and excitement.During the experiments the observers included their evaluations on the emotional state of the patient in the categories mentioned above, on the basis of the communication sign of the head, body or both. At the end they formulated several conclusions which have later been completed by others as well (see Argyle). Nonverbal messages do not only accompany verbal communication but they convey more effectively attitudes and feelings than verbal communication.Nonverbal signals influence the receiver deeper than verbal messages and the receiver always has greater confidence in nonverbal messages as they influence his decisions.The conclusion is that language may be used successfully to communicate information related to the world around us and the problems waiting to be solved, while nonverbal messages play an important role in the communication of social values, attitudes, affinity and other personal reactions. …