Nonverbal Behaviour: Culture, Gender, and the Media

Teri Kwal Gamble and Michael W. Gamble

Throughout the world, people use nonverbal cues to facilitate self-expression. To

a great extent, however, the culture of a people modifies their use of such cues. For
example, individuals who belong to contact cultures, which promote interaction and
encourage displays of warmth, closeness, and availability, tend to stand close to
each other when conversing, seek maximum sensory experience, and touch each
other frequently. In ,contrast, members of noncontact cultures discourage the use of
such behaviours. Saudi Arabia, France, and Italy are countries with contact cultures;
their members relish the intimacy of contact when conversing. In contrast,
Scandinavia, Germany, England, Japan, and the United States are low- or lower-
contact cultures whose members value privacy and maintain more distance from
each other when interacting.

Individuals who grow up in different cultures may display emotion or express

intimacy in different ways. It is normal, for example, for members of Mediterranean
cultures to display highly emotional reactions that are uninhibited and greatly
exaggerated; it is common for them to express grief or happiness with open facial
displays, magnified gestures, and vocal cues that support the feelings. On the other
hand, neither the Chinese nor the Japanese readily reveal their feelings in public,
preferring to display less emotion, maintain more self-control, and keep their feelings
to themselves; for these reasons, they often remain expressionless.

Even when different cultures use the same nonverbal cues, their members may
not give the cues the same meaning. in the United States, for example, a nod
symbolizes agreement or consent, while in Japan it means only that a message was
received.

If we hope to interact effectively with people from different cultures, it is

important that we make the effort to identify and understand the many ways culture
shapes nonverbal communication. We need to acknowledge that one
communication style is not intrinsically better than any other; it is that awareness that
can help contribute to more successful multicultural exchanges.

Men and women commonly use nonverbal communication in ways that reflect
societal expectations. For example, men are expected to exhibit assertive behaviours
that demonstrate their power and authority; women, in contrast, are expected to
exhibit more reactive and responsive behaviours. Thus, it should not surprise us that
men 'talk more and interrupt women frequently than vice versa.

Men are also usually more dominant during interactions that women. Visual
dominance is measured by comparing the percentage of time spent looking while
speaking with the percentage of time spent looking while listening. When compared
with women, men display higher levels of looking ' while speaking than women do,
and lower levels than women when they are listening. Thus, the visual dominance
ratio of men is usually higher than that of women, and again reflects the use of
nonverbal cues to reinforce perceptions of social power.

Men and women also differ in their use of space and touch. Men use space
and touch to assert their dominance over women. As a result, men are much more
likely to touch women that women are to touch men. Women are thus more apt to
be recipients of touching actions than they are to be the initiators of such actions.
Men also claim more personal space than women usually do, and they more
frequently walk in front of women rather than behind them. Thus, in general males are
the touchers, not the touches, and the leaders rather than the followers.

There are nonverbal behaviours that women display more than men do.
Women tend to smile more than men. They also commonly display their feelings more
overtly than men. in general, women are more expressive than men and exhibit
higher levels of involvement when engaged in person-to-person interaction than men.
Women also use nonverbal signals to draw others into conversation to a greater
extent than men. While women demonstrate an interest in affiliation, men are
generally more interested in establishing the strength of their own ideas and agendas
than they are in sharing the floor with others. Women also are better interpreters of
nonverbal messages than men.

All too often, the media and technology help legitimize stereotypical
nonverbal-displays. The contents of various media contain a plethora of open sexual
appeals, portrayals of women obsessed with men, and male-female interactions that
portray the man as physically dominant and . the female as subordinate. They also
include numerous repetitions of the messages that “thin is in.”

After repeated exposure to such media messages, men and women come to
believe and ultimately emulate what they see and hear. Thus, females. are primed to
devote considerable energy to improving their appearance, preserving their
youthfulness, and nurturing others, while males learn to display tougher, more
aggressive take-charge cues, trying all the while to control their emotions.

Nonverbal power cues echo the male dominance/female subservience-

mediated message. In advertisements, for example, men are typically portrayed
superior to women, who are usually shown in various stages of undress. In the media,
nonverbal behaviours portray women as vulnerable and men in control.

The repetition of such myths can make us feel dissatisfied and inadequate. If we
rely on the media as a reference point for what is and is not desirable in our
relationships and interactions, we may find it difficult to be ourselves.

Even mediated vocal cues suggest that it is the male and not the female who is
the authority. in up to 90 percent of all advertisements male voices are used in voice-
overs even when the product being sold is aimed at women. ’

Further complicating the situation is the continued growth of the use of

computer-generated virtual reality simulations. in addition to allow us to feel as if we
were really interacting in different, but make-believe environments and even giving
us the opportunity to change our gender, such simulations are also being used to
enforce violent gender scenarios resulting "in women being threatened and killed.
Even when erotic rather than violent, the media offerings all too often reinforce the
notion that men have physical control over women.

Gamble, Teri Kwak and Gamble, Michael. "Nonverbal Behavior: Culture, Gender and the Media" in
Exploring Language by Gary Gaoshgarian. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.