Receptive styles of implicit communication: a look at student actors and clinicians.

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This note describes an experiment on the receptivity of implicit communication (Mehrabian, 1971) by smdenc actors and student clinicians. The importance of implicit communication in theatrical (Miller, 1972) and clinical (Mahl, 1968) training gave support to a research hypothesis which predicted a similaricy in the receptive styles of these two student groups. Twenty student actors, 20 clinical smdents, and 20 undergraduates rated two sets of prepared slides that depicted dyadic interaction on 18 semantic scales including the dimensions of evaluarion, potency, and responsiveness (Mehrabian, 1969). Ss also indicated the degree of importance they placed on the nonverbal modalities (facial expressions, gestures, and postures) in making semantic decisions. A three-factor mixed design with repeated measures on rwo factors was used. An analysis of variance1 performed on the semantic ratings showed that naive Ss, clinicians, and actors were not significantly different on these scales (Ms = 3.45, 3.51, 3.57 respectively; p > .05). A similar analysis of the modality scores did yield significant differences between subject groups (Ms = 3.55, 2.61, 2.57, respectively; F = 15.28, d f = 2/59, p .05); however, both groups differed significantly from the Ss ( p < .05). Further study of implicit communication and such skilled decoders of it as actors, mimes, painters, dancers, etc. may add much to an understanding of the total communication process.