Nonverbal Sexual Differences Essay, Research Paper

Nonverbal Sex Differences

If you are not already concerned about differences between men and women you will be. Knowing and understanding those differences can determine how successful your marriage and career will be. If you assume that men and women look at things in the same way your in for some big problems and disappointments in the future and probably in the near future. If I were to tell you that I had all the answers I would be misleading and probably down right lying. But, a subject this important requires that the answers be truthful and sound. For that reason I read Nonverbal Sex Differences by Judith A. Hall. This book is one of the most current and insightful books out on the market today. I have yet to find another book that was published after 1990 when this book was probably due to the complexity of interpreting and decoding nonverbal sex differences.

Chapter 1 Goals and Methods

Chapter one is about the goals and methods that the author wants to achieve in this book. It also talks about verbal clues that to the trained eye would reveal aspects of the emotional state or the self-representation style of the speaker. It is her belief that the physical aspects such as how much a person talks, and how fast or slow they talk are all included in the nonverbal style. Hall also states that since most documents simply document sex differences and then speculate the outcomes her book has an obvious advantage ever any other document written.

Chapter 2 Judgment Accuracy

Judgment Accuracy is about stereotypes. She states that in this chapter women are more nutrient that men and that this is also a common trait found among female monkeys. She believes that women exceed men on certain “clusters”. Women exceed men on a number of traits such as socioemotional, expression, and they are more interpersonally orientated. She believes that men exceed women on the cluster of traits dealing with task orientation, instrumental, and agentic levels.

Chapter 3 Explaining Judgment Accuracy

Judgment accuracy deals with the accuracy of judgments made by people. It is said that over 75% of all communication on nonverbal. This is from facial reactions, gazes, distance from people or audience, touch, body movements, and aspects of the voice. She does not get into the details of each of the nonverbal but simply states that these are all aspects of communication.

Chapter 4 Expression Accuracy

Hall believes that people’s expression will supercede and verbal message they are sending. Examples of this would be the facial reaction such as looking down or away when telling lye. The verbal message contradicts the nonverbal. Learning expressions and decoding them is the first step in accurately predicting what a persons intentions are. One important thing that this chapter dealt with was Hall found that it is easier to figure out the emotions of women than men. She then concludes that since women are easier to predict than men, women are more easily read than men.

Chapter 5 The Face

Hall believes that universally women are expected to appear pleasant. This is why they smile more than men. Many people concluded that since this was true that women would show less negative facial expressions than men. However, she found in her studies that women show more facial of all sorts than men to. She also found that the cause of this is that women are more comfortable around other women rather than other men. She also concluded that the smiling tells people that they should trust them and they are warm.

Chapter 6 Gaze

It was found that women gaze more than men do. This says women are more uncomfortable that men in dealing with people they can’t talk to face to face. It was also suggested in this chapter that the reason men did not gaze as much is because they did not want to start a confrontation. She also said that they gazes were not typically between opposite sexes but rather same sexes. This can further reinforce the fact that men are trying to avoid confrontations.

Chapter 7 Interpersonal Distance and Orientation

It was found in this chapter that men put more distance between people the women when communication. This says that men are more territorial then women and as a result can be more confronting then women. Women on the other hand like to be closer to a person they are communication. They feel that a greater distance would give them a feeling of alienation.

Chapter 8 Touch

This chapter deals with the obvious subject of touch. It was discovered that women touch other women more that men touch men. However, it was found that the higher status of a man the more he touched others. They concluded that this was because they men wanted to be remembered by others.

Chapter 9 Body Movement and Position

Chapter 9 was 3 pages and a chart showing the different movements. Basically it said men are more restless, into relaxation, and need more space than women. Women are more self conscious and expressive that men.

Chapter 10 Voice

It was found that female voices were more fluent, softer, slower, high pitched, and more variable in pitch then men. The author also states that since women have these qualities more than men, they are more pleasant and unassuming. She concludes the chapter by saying the women are better at judging facial and vocal channels then men.

Quotes

Chapter 1- “Though some behaviors to be discussed are clearly nonverbal, such as interpersonal touch, others seem at first glance to be both verbal and nonverbal.” (Pg.2)

Chapter 2- “We have seen in this chapter that females are better decoders of nonverbal expressions than males, and that this result is very consistent and of moderate size.” (Pg.27)

Chapter 3- “one line of research has found newborn females to be more responsive (by crying more) then newborn males to the sound of another infants cry’s. This could mean that females are born with a predisposition to be responsive to nonverbal clues, which could set the stage for superior acquisition of knowledge about them.” (Pg. 47)

Chapter 4- “Expression accuracy refers to overall decode ability, not to specific nonverbal behaviors.” (Pg. 57)

Chapter 5- “women see and expect to see more smiles around them.” (Pg. 71)

Chapter 6- “That people like to gaze at women in interaction in subject to the same two explanations: women are considered nicer and more likely to respond.” (Pg. 84)

Chapter 7- “The distance at which people interact has been shown to vary with factors, including nationality, relative status, degree of friendship, nature of situation, social class, race, age, and sex.” (Pg. 85)

Chapter 8- “The possibility of sex differences in touch has aroused more theoretical interest then any other nonverbal sex difference.” (Pg.106)

Chapter 9- “The male pattern of restlessness may signify awkwardness and nervousness but not, possibly, the more acute self consciousness that seems more implied in women’s movements.” (Pg. 121)

Chapter 10- “Research on the voice bears a resemblance to that on movement in that both areas of research are fragmented.” (Pg. 128)

3 Ways This Book Will Help Me

1. This book will help me in my marriage to come. It provides insight into the mind of women and helps men to understand situations from a woman’s point of view. Without seeing things from different prospective we only have a one-dimensional view of the world. It is my belief that if a person were to master these nonverbal codes they would have potential to be very happy not only in life, but gain the respect of other’s, and help relate to kids and peers better.

2. This book will help me in my career. This book basically says that women are emotional and that they are social beings. Based on these readings I have come up with an idea on why we have the “glass ceiling” that women just can’t seem to get above. Women are to scared to hurt another’s feelings. Men don’t care the book said that we are conquers and are the more dominant sex. This gives me the impression that women want everyone to rise together as one big group. Men on the other hand will trash each other’s reputation and performance to gain more or achieve a higher status. So what this book basically says is that if you use distance as well as be very direct almost intimidating the woman will fold and you will win.

3. It can help an individual manipulate the opposite sex. If you know tendencies about the opposite sex then they can come predictable. If someone is predictable for example in court if a lawyer can predict what a person will say or how they will react then they can use this to there advantage and get further more quickly with less effort.