Nonverbal Behavior in a Global Context: A Time for Dialogue

Abstract

Reports across diverse disciplines attest to the dramatic changes that are taking place in the connectedness of different cultures around the globe. Indeed, Arnett (2002) notes that globalization is one of the most widely used terms to describe the current state of the world. Like professionals and scholars in other disciplines, nonverbal researchers cannot avoid asking questions about human behavior within a global context. The history of nonverbal theory and research has been infused to a greater extent than most other areas of psychological inquiry with questions about cross-cultural similarities and differences in behavior (DePaulo & Friedman, 1998; Knapp & Hall, 2006). However, these questions have often been in the service of debating universal versus cultural origins of particular nonverbal phenomena such as the facial expression of emotions. Questions within a contemporary global context call attention to broader issues given that globalization entails a diversity of phenomena. The Journal of Nonverbal Behavior offers our readers an opportunity to consider some of these issues in this Special Focus on Nonverbal Behavior in a Global Context. To this end, two papers are featured. Each paper is accompanied by a Dialogue in which the lead author responds to questions posed by the editor. We hope that these Dialogues provide our readers with useful insights for raising questions about their own and other research that will move us closer to meeting the challenges of understanding nonverbal behavior in this contemporary global world. In the first paper, Patterson, Iizuka, Tubbs, Ansel, Tsutsumi, and Anson describe the results of their experimental investigation of unfocused interactions between pedestrians on streets in America and Japan. Although understanding how the process of what Goffman (1963) calls civil inattention and related nonverbal displays differ and play out in casual cross-cultural interactions is an interesting question in its own right, it is an especially important one within a global context. More specifically, in this era of globalization where