Nonverbal Communication and Power

The relation of nonverbal communication to power, and to related constructs such as dominance and status, has captured the interest of researchers for more than 30 years. In this entry, two kinds of nonverbal communication are discussed— nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication skill.

Nonverbal behavior is any visible or audible behavior aside from the linguistic content of a message. Nonverbal behavior can convey information about emotions, attitudes, roles, cognitive and physical states, and personal characteristics such as gender, age, and personality. Such information can be conveyed both deliberately and unintentionally. Visible nonverbal behaviors include facial expressions, head movements, posture, body and hand movements, touching oneself or others, leg positions and movements, interpersonal gaze, directness of interpersonal orientation, and interpersonal distance. Vocal nonverbal behaviors include qualities of the voice such as pitch and pitch variation, loudness, speed, and tonal qualities. Several additional behaviors are often included among nonverbal behaviors even though they are closely related to speech: interruptions, pauses and hesitations, listener responses (such as uh-huh uttered while another is speaking), filled pauses (such as um uttered during one's own speech), dysfluencies in speech, and amount of speech.

Nonverbal communication skill encompasses two kinds of skill: accuracy of encoding (sending or expressing) messages or other kinds of information through nonverbal behavior, and accuracy of decoding (interpreting or understanding) the meanings of other people's nonverbal behavior. To [Page 453]measure these skills, there must be a criterion against which accuracy can be scored.

Nonverbal communication has been investigated with regard to a variety of power-related concepts, including dominance, authority, expertise, influence, rank, status, and power. The fine distinctions among these terms are not always easy to draw, partly because researchers do not always use them in the same way. Because all of these definitions reflect position on a low-high dimension, here the term power will be used to subsume these conceptually related, though not synonymous, concepts. Power may be defined in absolute or relative terms, may be defined in terms of states or traits, may be defined in terms of intentions or outcomes, and may be attached to individuals on an achieved, ascribed, or assigned basis. Examples include personality dominance, experimentally assigned roles, occupational rank, and social class.