isthatcommunication

[isthatcommunication]

J. Analysis of Relational Nonverbals: Slow Down & Wait Up

To a former flame:

Hello. I hope this letter finds you well. You’ll be glad to hear that my life is proceeding swimmingly. I am attending a wonderful school with lovely people and excellent professors, my academics are just the right amount of challenging, and my professional life is flourishing. But I digress.

I am writing you today to discuss what might have been your most annoying trait: your pace. Yes, you read that correctly — the pace at which you walk was a constant thorn in my side. Here’s why.

Where words fail, nonverbal communication fills in the gaps. Everything has a message, from the way you move to the way you speak; from the way you touch to the way you look; from the way you perceive space to the way you understand time. So yes, your pace reveals more than you know.

To start, your pace often left me in the dust. We both played basketball on the varsity team, and our height difference was not significant. In other words, my physical fitness and your slightly longer legs were not to blame for my inability to keep up.  To an outsider, it constantly appeared as though you were trying your hardest to walk away from me, and to this day I cannot fathom why.

Research in proxemics, or the study of space and spatial relationships, dictates that the distance between romantic partners is closer than others, generally falling between zero to eighteen inches. Social norms agree with this as well; if a third-party observer sees two people, especially those of opposite sexes, walking close together, they are more inclined to assume that they are romantic partners (Burgoon & Jones, 1976). Do you see where I am going with this? The pace at which you walk meant that there was often at least two feet of space between us, which begs the following question: did you have something to hide? What made you feel the need to distance yourself from me? When I asked why you felt the need to walk so far ahead of me, you brushed off my concerns as nothing more than a figment of my imagination. Your refusal to acknowledge this meant that I had to fill in the blanks for myself, and what I came up with was not flattering at all.

The distance between us as a result of your quick pace violated stereotypical notions of normal behavior between romantic partners. I had never dated anyone so hell-bent on maintaining a bubble of space between us, and I did not know what to do. Friends were constantly asking me if we had fought or argued recently and whether or not we were okay, and many were as baffled as I was when I assured them that your behavior was normal. Studies have shown that people develop different ways of regulating private and public emotional displays based on idiosyncratic expectations of what constitutes a romantic relationship (Burgoon, 1993). Is that what’s happening here? Perhaps the answer really is that simple and our love language simply did not match. Regardless, this was perhaps my biggest grievance with you, and just the thought of this is enough to get me heated once more.

In the future, I would advise you to take notice of this annoying habit. I have seen you walk with your friends before, so I am well aware that you are capable of slowing your speed. Whether you realize it or not, you might be unwittingly causing those around you to feel as though they are not worthy or deserving or your attention. Making this slight adjustment will open your eyes to a whole new world, I assure you, for it is always worth it to stop and smell the roses. I think I can speak on behalf of those around you when I say that it would be much appreciated. Best of luck with this mission.

In closing: slow down, for God’s sake.

References

Burgoon, J. K., & Jones, S. B. (1976). Toward A Theory Of Personal Space Expectations And Their Violations. Human Communication Research,2(2), 131-146. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1976.tb00706.x

Burgoon, J. K. (1993). Interpersonal Expectations, Expectancy Violations, and Emotional Communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 12(1-2), 30-48. doi:10.1177/0261927x93121003

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D. Artifact Analysis: This Shirt is Tie-Dye For!

One aspect of growing up that I never quite understood was the fascination with picking favorites. What’s your favorite animal? Favorite food? Favorite sport? Sharks and giraffes. Sushi and pasta. Basketball and soccer. As a child, I never could pick just one. While others saw it as fickle indecisiveness, I considered more as a lack of self-imposed limitations. Two favorites meant I had double the chance at happiness — while other kids had to pout and complain their way through a field trip to the aquarium before they got to see their lions and tigers at the zoo, I could enjoy the sharks and giraffes with an equal amount of satisfaction. It makes sense, then, that my polyamory extends to colors. When asked by those around me, I always asserted that my favorite color was rainbow. “No, you can’t do that! You have to have a favorite!” No, I do not. My favorite color was rainbow and that was final.

Colors can affect your mood in different ways depending on context; science has confirmed as much. Red is lively and exciting, blue brings to mind a calming ocean, green is the color of success, and yellow is cautionary and eye-catching (Elliott & Maier, 2014). However, these effects are not always so positive. Red signifies blood and danger, green is the color of envy, and black is often linked to evil and chaos. This is where context comes in play, for thoughts of blood and evil never once crossed the mind of my happy-go-lucky, prepubescent self outside of Saturday morning cartoons. I liked rainbows because they were colorful and exciting. I liked rainbows because every color has potential to be great in different situations. I liked rainbows because it meant the rain was over and we could play outside during recess again. Bright colors brought me joy, and that was enough.

I went to Disneyland for the first time in third grade. My best friends Jenny and Ashley, both of whom had never been to Disneyland as well, each held about twenty dollars in our hands, given to us by our parents to buy a souvenir to commemorate our first visit to the happiest place on earth. After turning the corner around shelves twice our height, I saw the most amazing shirt I had ever seen before in my young life — a tie-dye shirt with “Disneyland” printed over a Mickey Mouse graphic. The colors were bright and beautiful, and I jumped and shouted in excitement. I asked my camp counselor if my twenty dollars were enough, and while I do not recall the price, I remember being unable to afford it and the feeling of disappointment that followed. My best friends, being the sweethearts they were, offered to lend me some money so that I could have my dream shirt, but I could not let them sacrifice their own souvenirs for my sake. I grabbed their hands, walked us away from the shirt, and made a mental note to come back for it one day.

Flash forward to 2015. I am eighteen-years old, I had just committed to attending the University of California, Santa Barbara, and I was on my way to Disneyland for their annual Grad Night event commemorating high school seniors throughout Southern California. After what seemed to be the hundredth gift shop of the day, something bright caught me eye — a shirt! Not just any shirt, but THE shirt of my childhood dreams! I snatched it off the hanger and bought it without hesitation, using money from my paycheck from my job scorekeeping at local basketball tournaments. Although I had outgrown my picking-favorites-is-stupid phase by that time and settled on yellow as my favorite color, the shirt spoke to me in a different way this time: as a tribute to the LGBTQ+ community. I had recently, after extensive self-discovery and self-reflection, come out to my closest friends as bisexual, and the rainbow tie-dye’s resemblance to the pride flag was not lost on me. While my family did not (and still does not) know about my sexual orientation, I knew that they would not approve, so this shirt became my secret little celebration of identity and, on a smaller scale, a rebellion against their traditional values.

Clothing is a mode of communication, for it is the primary and outermost layer of yourself that you display for those around you to see. So what does my tie-dye t-shirt say about me? According to research by Rosenfeld and Plax, it says plenty! In their 1977 study, Rosenfeld and Plax distributed questionnaires to men and women measuring personality traits based on their clothing choice in order to come up with characterizations for all participants. Women who prioritized practicality in their clothing choice were characterized as confident and outgoing, both of which form an integral part of my personality. Furthermore, women whose outfits are regularly unnoticed by those around her were perceived as independent with a low motivation towards heterozexual relationships (p. 28). While the specificity of this characterization shocked me, I cannot help but admit to its accuracy, for my independence and sexual orientation make up an integral part of my identity. Perhaps my agreement is in part due to self-confirmation bias; I cannot confidently rule that out. Regardless, one thing is for sure: my loud and colorful t-shirt is a direct reflection of my loud and colorful personality, and I would not want it any other way.

All in all, my tie-dye Disneyland t-shirt is directly indicative of my social and self-identity. While I never once thought to question my affinity for that shirt past my surface-level enjoyment, recent research surrounding color psychology and the effect of colors on mood and physiological responses have opened my eyes to a plethora of scientific reasons justifying my love. In a surprising turn of events compared to my juvenile self, I can now say with complete confidence that this shirt is indeed my favorite.

References

Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). Color Psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on Psychological Functioning in Humans. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 95-120. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035

Rosenfeld, L. B., & Plax, T. G. (1977). Clothing as Communication. Journal of Communication,27(2), 24-31. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1977.tb01823.x

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G. Computer-Mediated Nonverbal Communication: #StopPeriods2018

Alternate Title: Are You on Your Period? How the Period Came to Be Known as the Most Menacing of Marks

Periods end statements. Exclamation points emphasize urgency or volume. Question marks follow requests and inquiries. Commas allow thoughts to continue after a brief pause. Basic writing rules like this have been ingrained in our brains since we were children learning to read and write for the first time. Without a doubt, punctuation marks play an important role in regulating the written language — they help us comprehend meaning and provide context when we cannot rely on facial or vocalic cues to understand messages. However, in a world that has embraced SMS, Twitter, and, more recently, emojis,  punctuation marks are often the first to go when message senders are forced to adjust their character count. So what does that mean for language?

As a result of society’s slow shift away from proper punctuation use, punctuation marks — especially the period —  in shorthand text messaging has recently undergone a demonization of sorts in pop culture, as seen in the iMessage exchange above. My roommate had told me she was going to be grocery shopping and offered to pick up some drinks for our friends who would be coming over later that night. She texted me once she got to the store to ask what I wanted. I had no drink preference, so I texted her back letting her know to grab whatever she wanted. She immediately freaked out and thought that, because I had used a period in my message, she had done something to make me mad. All it took was a simple period for her to jump to the conclusion that I must hate her.

Her assumption, while false and wildly exaggerated, is one that many people commonly make. In a 2018 study by Houghton, Upadhyay, and Klin, subjects were shown different text exchanges in which the response ended in either no punctuation mark or a period and asked to rank them based on perceived impression and connotation. Results showed that text messages followed by a period were understood to be more abrupt and negative than those without periods. The researchers cite Grice’s maxim of relation, which states that only things pertinent to the ongoing conversation should be said, as a possible explanation for their results, justifying that subjects likely “assumed that the period was not included arbitrarily but was included to add meaning to the response” (p. 116). In other words, participants assumed that the message sender had gone out of their way to include the period and, according to Grice’s maxim, must have had an underlying motive to do so.

A second study by Gunraj, Drumm-Hewitt, Dashow, Upadhyay, and Klin (2016) similarly found that responses that ended in periods were perceived as less sincere than those without periods. This trend, however, only applied to text message exchanges, for this conclusion did not apply when subjects were presented with handwritten notes. This is perhaps due to the rather impersonal nature of text messages; while handwritten notes can carry personal touches such as handwriting, choice of stationary, and doodles, text messages are more sterile due to the their matching nondescript font and quick, convenient nature. One has to really go out of the way to gather the materials to write a handwritten note, whereas only several seconds are needed to whip out your phone, type, and send a text message.

There was once a point in time when punctuation was understood as simply that — punctuation. The period meant the speaker has finished their thought. At some point within this century, however, the meaning of periods shifted from a simple means to bring an end to a sentence into something more sinister. This alarming change begs the following question: how do we mitigate this? Perhaps the most common way of defusing the period’s stern, no-nonsense connotation is through the use of emojis. These small digital cartoons come in many shapes, colors, and forms and can be used to convey a variety of thoughts and emotions. Their popularity has skyrocketed in recent history with the rise of social media, and their fun and whimsical nature allows them to offset the perceived seriousness of periods and serve as a wonderful method to brighten the message.

In conclusion, the period has apparently become the scourge of text messages and indicative of underlying tension in what may soon become a failing relationship. On the other hand, emojis have become the savior of millenials everywhere, swooping in to rescue innocent people from the evils of punctuation everywhere. It comes as no surprise, then, that my roommate reacted the way she did, for she may very well have understood my use of proper punctuation as a personal attack to the essence of her being. After all, her propensity for overreaction and exaggeration is matched only by my hyperbolic tendencies. 😏

References

Gunraj, D. N., Drumm-Hewitt, A. M., Dashow, E. M., Upadhyay, S. S., & Klin, C. M. (2016). Texting insincerely: The role of the period in text messaging. Computers in Human Behavior,55, 1067-1075. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.003

Houghton, K. J., Upadhyay, S. S., & Klin, C. M. (2018). Punctuation in text messages may convey abruptness. Period. Computers in Human Behavior,80, 112-121. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.10.044

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I. Sports and Nonverbal Communication: 2018 NBA Finals Edition

The whistle blows.

End of the fourth quarter. 4.7 seconds left on the clock. Cleveland down by 1. Cavaliers guard George Hill at the free throw line. All in attendance are on their feet, rocking back and forth nervously. Three dribbles. Swish. Hill sinks the first one with a soft touch. The score is now tied. The crowd visibly deflates, but they remain standing in anticipation of the second free throw. Hill spins the ball in his hand, lifts it up, cocks it back… and misses! The crowd is screaming. Players are crashing the boards. Suddenly, the extended arm of J.R. Smith reaches through the fray and snags the rebound in a marvelous show of athleticism. Warriors fans are tense. Cavaliers fans rejoice. All Smith has to do is sink an easy basket to secure the win. Smith takes a dribble an- huh? He takes another dribble.. and another.. and another? Uh, he’s near the half-court line now… The seconds continue to tick by. Cavaliers star LeBron James waves his arms and manages to get his attention. Smith seems to awaken from a trance and turns to dish the ball to Hill at the three-point line, but it’s too late. Hill’s desperate last-second heave is blocked, and the clock hits zero. LeBron storms off the court, and Smith follows with his head hung low.

Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals was a wild ride from start to finish, and the crowd had no choice but to sit back and endure the roller coaster of energy and emotions. The Golden State Warriors would eventually go on to win 124-114, and J.R. Smith’s amateur mistake would top headlines for the next several days. The most crucial moment, however, was the time between Smith’s blunder and the start of the overtime period. Although he did his best to appear unaffected by the turn of events, Cavaliers superstar LeBron James’s use of kinesics and proxemics expressed his dissatisfaction with his teammates and the outcome of the regulation period. Here’s the breakdown:

1. The Breakaway

The cameras zoomed in on superstar LeBron James as he walked towards the Cavaliers’ bench on the sideline, frustration evident on his face in everything from the rigid furrow of his brow and the set of his jaw to the swing of his arms and the force of his steps. His fast pace is indicative of his inner turmoil, for it may be construed as an adaptor gesture manifesting to satisfy his emotional needs; in other words, LeBron is literally “walking off his anger.” The direction he is walking in is also noteworthy — as you can see above, he is distancing himself from J.R. Smith, otherwise known as He-Who-Committed-the-Grave-Error. This divergence highlights the difference in status between the two men by painting LeBron as the star who did all he could for his team and Smith as the guilty party behind their current predicament. Additionally, LeBron is expressing his dissatisfaction and disappointment in his teammate by walking away from Smith and refusing to hear him out as he is trying to explain what happened. Upon reaching the bench, LeBron drops heavily into a seat, setting into motion the following series of events, forever immortalized on the Internet.

2. The Question

Notice LeBron James’s rigid posture and the empty seat he left between himself and J.R. Smith. His diverging actions are a sharp contrast from the rest of the team, who are either crowded around one another or slouched into seats further down the bench. LeBron also makes a point of sitting near the front (the “head”) of the bench in a show of status, for those spots are generally reserved for coaching personnel. As he sits and processes the unfortunate turn of events, he asks head coach Tyronn Lue if they had any timeouts left. A timeout could have changed the outcome, for it means that they could have stopped the game and drawn up a play that, if executed correctly, could have given them an opportunity for a game-winning shot. Expecting a no in response, LeBron is visibly taken aback when Lue informs him that yes, they indeed had a timeout that they did not use at the end of the game. This brings us to the moment pictured below.

3. The Shock

LeBron’s arms are lifted and resting on his head, and his gaze is directed at the ground. He is seemingly unable to look at his teammates and coaches, perhaps because he feels let down upon the revelation that his coaches knowingly did not call for a timeout and, as a result, squandered a valuable opportunity to score and win the game.

4. The Crash

LeBron then falls forward and covers his face with his hands, perhaps to hide the array of emotions coursing through his mind right now. His teammates stare at their leader as he takes a moment to continue processing his thoughts.

5. The Acceptance

LeBron finally sits up, but his arms are crossed, his back is pressed to the chair, and his gaze is turned away from the rest of his team. His lower jaw juts out in a show of both defiance and acceptance, letting his teammates and coaches know that although he is unhappy with them, he realizes that they are unable to do anything but keep moving forward. Aside from LeBron shifting in his seat, there has been no conversation or movement around the Cavaliers bench for about 15 seconds now.

So why do these moments matter? What is the relevance of LeBron shutting everyone out? For starters, research by van Breukelen, van der Leeden, Wesselius, and Hoes (2012) shows that high perceived levels of differential treatment lead to “a lower‐quality working relationship between [leaders] and [players] and in a less positive evaluation of team atmosphere” (p. 57). In other words, actions that differ between different members of the team have a negative effect on team chemistry. The differential treatment, in this case, refers to LeBron’s initial shouting at J.R. Smith after his mistake and his refusal to acknowledge Smith as he tried to explain himself shortly after. By shunning Smith, LeBron made it clear that he blamed J.R. Smith for sending the game into overtime despite the fact that an argument could be made against George Hill for missing his free throw and getting blocked on his three-point attempt. LeBron’s actions opened the door for cracks to form in the team chemistry, which already stood on shaky ground after a lackluster performance throughout the game and the events of the last few seconds of regulation. Although there is no doubt that LeBron is the leader and captain of the Cavaliers, his behavior is more typical of coaches and other higher-ranked staff rather than other players. At the end of the day, both LeBron and Smith share the same title of basketball player, and LeBron’s addressing of Smith as a superior rather than an equal may have caused lasting damage to their working relationship.

Moreover, a study by Cunningham and Eys (2007) found that greater communication between team members reduces role ambiguity, leading to high satisfaction and performance among the team. In the moments after the end of regulation gameplay, team communication on the Cavaliers bench was almost nonexistent. The extended silence can be attributed to LeBron’s anger and his role as the team leader, for it means that no one is willing to stand up and cut the tension. Instead, LeBron’s teammates would rather tiptoe around the elephant in the room and give him space to process everything alone. This lack of communication left everyone unsure and unsteady regarding the roles they held on LeBron’s team. Were they blacklisted? Were they still in LeBron’s good graces? The heightened uncertainty, in turn, negatively affects performance, and that was evident in the way the rest of the overtime period played out. The Warriors would go on to win the game by 10 points, and the Cavaliers lost what might have been their only chance to secure a win on the road in the Warriors’ home arena.

All in all, LeBron James, as the unofficial leader of the team, may have played a bigger role in his team’s Game 1 loss than previously thought. While J.R. Smith is indeed the obvious person to blame for losing, LeBron’s reaction to Smith’s blunder set the tone for the remainder of the night and perhaps even the series. LeBron communicated a clear message of frustration and separation through his use of kinesics and proxemics, and his actions negatively affected team chemistry and performance before ultimately costing them the game. Commentators and fans alike have already credited this moment as the deciding factor if LeBron James decides to leave Cleveland in free agency, but only time will tell. For the moment, the Cavaliers have no choice but to pick themselves up and dust themselves off. There is no time to wait — on to the next one.

References

Cunningham, I. J. and Eys, M. A. (2007), Role Ambiguity and Intra‐Team Communication in Interdependent Sport Teams. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37: 2220-2237. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00256.x

van Breukelen, W. , van der Leeden, R. , Wesselius, W. and Hoes, M. (2012), Differential treatment within sports teams, leader–member (coach–player) exchange quality, team atmosphere, and team performance. J. Organiz. Behav., 33: 43-63. doi:10.1002/job.735