Chapter 4
The Cultural Bases of
Nonverbal Communication
David Matsumoto and Hyisung C. Hwang
Culture has strong and pervasive influences on
nonverbal communication. In America and Europe,
people greet each other with a handshake and a
smile. In East Asia, people bow to each other with
their hands at their sides, whereas in Thailand,
people bow with their hands in front of them as
if in prayer. In the Middle East, people bow with
their hands on their hearts. This chapter addresses
the question of how and why these cultural dif-
ferences occur—the cultural bases of nonverbal
communication—focusing on cultural influences
on nonverbal behaviors.
We begin this chapter with a discussion of the
origin and definition of culture because we believe
that understanding the cultural bases of nonverbal
communication requires a working definition of
culture. Adopting a working definition of culture
requires, in turn, a discussion of the origins of cul-
ture. We then describe how culture influences non-
verbal behaviors through the important mediating
variable of context. Culture does so by allowing
people to create rules that are known as cultural
norms that provide guidelines for appropriate
behavior in specific contexts. Cultures also help
people to create sanctions and punishments for
norm transgressions. We believe that the func-
tion of culture is to provide guidelines for behavior
that promote social coordination and reduce the
potential for social conflict, which, in turn, facilitate
group efficiency and ultimately aid survival.
With this basic information concerning culture
and its functions, we then discuss the cultural
regulation of nonverbal communication. We argue
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14669-004
APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, D. Matsumoto, H. C. Hwang, and M. G. Frank (Editors-in-Chief)
Copyright © 2016 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
that the function of communication is to allow for
the sharing of social intentions, which facilitates
social coordination. Cultural norms provide rules
for the regulation of expressive behaviors, includ-
ing nonverbal behaviors, to allow for the sharing
of social intentions as part of communication.
We further argue that this underlying function of
nonverbal communication vis-à-vis the function
of culture is universal; the cultural norms and the
manifestation of those norms in actual behav-
ior, however, are different because of the various
adaptations different human groups have made to
survive in their ecological contexts. That is why
there are differences across cultures. We review
literature examining cultural differences in various
channels of nonverbal communication and link
those differences to the function of cultural norms.
Behaviors make sense when viewed from the per-
spective of the culture in which the behavior is
produced; they facilitate social coordination and
reduce social chaos in those contexts. However, cul-
tural differences in behavior can produce conflict
in intercultural situations, a topic with which we
end this chapter.
WHAT IS CULTURE?
The Origins of Culture
Gaining a better understanding of culture requires
first a framework for understanding the sources
of its origins. We believe that there are four such
sources: ecology, resources, group life, and the
evolved human mind and brain.
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Matsumoto and Hwang

Ecology.  Humans exist in specific ecologies, and land in that area—the amount of land on which food
those ecologies have a major impact on the devel- can grow to sustain the people in that area.
opment of culture. One aspect of ecology that influ- There are other ecological factors that influence
ences culture and that has received much research the development of culture as well. For instance,
attention is climate, and in particular deviation from global changes in climate across history have
temperate climate (Van de Vliert, 2009). Humans affected human evolution (Behrensmeyer, 2006),
need to regulate their body temperatures and have as has the incidence and prevalence of infectious
an easier time doing so in temperate climates, diseases in different regions of the world (Murray &
which happens to be around 22 °C (about 72 °F). Schaller, 2010). Contact with other cultures will
Much colder or hotter climates make life more dif- also affect a culture; this is especially true for
ficult and demanding, and these harsher climates immigrants, who come to a land with an already
require people to do more to adapt to their natural existing culture and must deal with the process of
environment. Harsher climates create greater risks acculturation.
of food shortage and spoilage, stricter diets, and
Resources.  A second source that influences the
more health problems; furthermore, infectious and
development of cultures is resources. These include
parasitic diseases tend to be more frequent in hotter
natural resources such as the presence or absence of
climates, and death from exposure is more frequent
water or land to grow food or to raise animals.
in colder climates (Matsumoto & Fletcher, 1996).
A land void of natural resources will encourage
Demanding climates require special clothing, hous-
teamwork and community spirit among its mem-
ing, and working arrangements as well as special
bers and interrelationships with other groups that
organizations for the production, transportation,
have abundant resources in order to survive and
trade, and storage of food. People in hotter climates
meet essential needs. In a land with plentiful natural
tend to organize their daily activities more around
resources, a group will have less need for attributes
shelter, shade, and temperature changes that occur
linked to social coordination or cooperation; in a
during the day. For example, Spanish culture
land with fewer natural resources, groups require
encourages the stopping of work in the midaft-
greater cooperation and cohesion.
ernoon, during the hottest time of the day, and
A major type of resource that influences cul-
reopening later, pushing back the working hours.
tures today is money or affluence, which itself is
There, it is not uncommon for people to have
a human cultural creation (Van de Vliert, 2009).
dinner outside at 11:00 p.m. or even midnight.
Abundant money can help buffer the consequences
People who live nearer the poles may organize their
of a lack of resources and harsh climates, which, in
lives around available sunlight. In psychological
turn, have interesting psychological consequences.
terms, more demanding cold or hot climates elicit a
People and groups with more money can afford to
chain of needs shared by all inhabitants in an area
be less in sync with others, as cooperation is not as
(Van de Vliert, 2009).
essential for survival. People and groups with less
Another ecological factor that influences the
money need to cooperate to survive. Importantly,
development of culture is population density. This
the interaction between ecological factors and afflu-
is the ratio of the number of people that live in an
ence drives the development of cultures (Van de
area relative to the size of the area. Some areas have
Vliert, 2009). Groups that live in harsh climates but
lots of people living in a very small space, like New
that have the resources to deal with them produce
York City, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Mexico City; that
ways of living that are different than groups that live
is, they have large population density. Other areas
in harsh climates but that do not have the resources
have only a few people living in a very large area,
(i.e., money) to deal with those climates.
like Alaska, Greenland, or the northern island of
Hokkaido in Japan; they have low population den- Group life.  A third source for the origin of human
sity. What affects cultures even more is the number culture is the fact that humans are social animals and
of people in an area relative to the amount of arable live in groups. Humans learned many hundreds of

78

thousands of years ago that living in groups was better
than living alone. However, there are consequences to
group life. On one hand, a major advantage of group
life is that groups are more efficient because they
allow members to divide labor. This allows groups to
accomplish more than any one individual can, which
is functional and adaptive for all group members,
thereby increasing the potential for survival. On the
other hand, a disadvantage is the potential for social
conflict and chaos because individual members are
very different. Social coordination, therefore, becomes
very important to reduce the possibility of conflict
and chaos and to increase efficiency.
The evolved human mind and brain.  A fourth
source for the origin of human cultures is the
evolved human mind and brain. One major com-
ponent of the human mind is the fact that humans
have basic needs that are ultimately related to repro-
ductive success (Boyer, 2000; Buss, 2001). These
include physical needs—the need to eat, drink,
sleep, handle waste, and reproduce—and safety
and security needs—the need for hygiene, shelter,
and warmth (recall our earlier discussion about the
importance of climate). These needs are universal to
all people of all cultures.
Over the course of history, people needed to
solve a host of distinct social problems to adapt
and, thus, to achieve reproductive success. These
social problems include forming and then negotiat-
ing complex status hierarchies, forming successful
work and social groups, attracting mates, fighting
off potential rivals for food and sexual partners, giv-
ing birth and raising children, and battling nature
(Buss, 1988, 1991, 2001). In fact, we need to do
these things in our everyday lives today as well.
Thus, basic needs are associated with social motives
(Hogan, 1982; Sheldon, 2004), which include the
motive to achieve and the motive to affiliate with
others, and these social motives are part of the
evolved human mind and brain.
Nature and evolution endowed humans with
a set of cognitive capacities that aid humans in
adapting to environments and addressing their
needs. One of these is language. Humans have the
unique ability to symbolize their physical and meta-
physical world (Premack, 2004), to create sounds
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
representing those symbols (morphemes), to create
rules connecting those symbols to meaning (syn-
tax and grammar), and to put this all together in
sentences. Moreover, humans have developed writ-
ing systems to reduce oral expressions to words on
paper. This book is a uniquely human product.
Other cognitive abilities that humans are
endowed with are those that allow for complex
social cognition. One of the most important
thinking abilities that humans have is the abil-
ity to believe that other people are intentional
agents—that is, that others have wishes, desires, and
intentions to act and behave (Tomasello, Carpenter,
Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005). Furthermore, people
know that others know that they have intentions.
Being in the “public eye,” therefore, takes on special
meaning for humans, because they know that oth-
ers can make judgments about them. Humans also
have causal beliefs, which form the basis for attribu-
tions. Morality, a uniquely human product, is rooted
in this unique human cognitive ability. This ability
apparently turns on in humans around 9 months of
age (Tomasello, 1999), which is a critical time of
development of many cognitive abilities.
Other animals can and do view themselves as
somewhat intentional agents. However, one thing
that differentiates humans from other animals is
the fact that we have the cognitive ability to share
our intentions with others. One of the major func-
tions of language is to allow for us to communicate a
shared intentionality (Tomasello & Herrmann, 2010;
we return to this point later in this chapter). Shared
intentionality may be at the heart of social coordina-
tion, which allows for the creation of human culture
(Fiske, 2000).
Another important ability that humans have is
the ability to continually build upon improvements.
When humans create something that is good, it
usually evolves to a next generation in which it is
even better. This is true for computers, cars, audio
music players, and, unfortunately, weapons. Toma-
sello, Kruger, and Ratner (1993) have called this the
ratchet effect. Like a ratchet, an improvement never
goes backward; it only goes forward and continues
to improve on itself. The ratchet effect does not
occur in other animals; monkeys may use twigs to
catch insects, but they never improve on that tool.
79
Matsumoto and Hwang
Our cognitive skills also include memory, which
allows for the creation of histories, which, in turn,
allows for the creation of traditions, customs, and
heritage (Balter, 2010; Liu et al., 2005, 2009;
Paez et al., 2008; Wang, 2006; Wang & Ross, 2007).
Our cognitive skills also include the ability to think
hypothetically and about the future. This not only
allows us to plan things but also to worry about the
uncertainty of the future, both of which form the
basis of important cultural practices.
People are also equipped with the ability to have
emotions. Emotions are rapid, information process-
ing systems that have evolved to aid humans in
reacting to events that require immediate action and
that have important consequences to one’s welfare
with minimal cognitive processing (Cosmides &
Tooby, 2000). Although emotions are part of an
archaic, biologically innate system that we share
with other animals, they also combine with our
advanced cognitive abilities to produce uniquely
human emotions that coevolved to aid humans in
solving complex social problems (Matsumoto &
Hwang, 2012).
Finally, people come equipped with personality
traits. Humans around the world share a core set
of traits that give them predispositions to adapt to
their environments, to solve social problems, and
to address their basic needs. Most research in this
area has focused on what is known as the Big Five
set of personality traits: Extraversion, Openness,
Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness
(McCrae & Costa, 1999; McCrae & Terracciano,
2005). Other traits may also be universal (Cheung,
van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011).
Summary.  Humans live in groups, and groups
exist in different ecologies and resources. Humans
have needs that must be met to survive. Fortunately,
humans do not come to the world as blank slates;
they come preequipped with an evolved, naturally
selected set of abilities and aptitudes that allows
them to adapt and survive. Groups of people need
to adapt their behaviors to their ecologies to maxi-
mize the use of their available resources to meet
their needs; the abilities and aptitudes in the evolved
human mind and brain give them the tools to adapt.
These adaptations produce behaviors, ways of living,
80
ways of thinking, and ways of being. These ways
become part of the contents of a group’s culture.
Group life requires social coordination, which
facilitates group efficiency. If groups are not
coordinated, there is social chaos. Thus, humans
need to keep social order and be coordinated to
accomplish tasks efficiently and to survive. Human
groups produce rules for behavior to facilitate coor-
dination, and create sanctions and punishments for
behavior that threatens coordination. To achieve
social order and coordination and to avoid chaos,
human groups therefore must create rules, or sys-
tems of living, and ways of being. This is culture.
Culture, therefore, provides a system that facilitates
social coordination while reducing social chaos
to maximize group efficiency and to ultimately
facilitate survival and well-being. At the same time,
cultural differences occur because different groups
produce different solutions to the problem of adap-
tation because of differences in the contexts in
which they exist.
A Definition of Culture
The term “culture” is an abstract metaphor for the
ways that each group develops to meet needs related
to survival. As a metaphor, culture refers to a mul-
titude of concepts. Culture can be used to describe
activities or behaviors, refer to heritage or tradi-
tion of a group, describe rules and norms, describe
learning or problem solving, define the organiza-
tion of a group, or refer to the origins of a group
(Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Kroeber &
Kluckhohn, 1952/1963). Culture can refer to gen-
eral characteristics; food and clothing; housing and
technology; economy and transportation; individual
and family activities; community and government;
welfare, religion, and science; and sex and the life
cycle (Barry, 1980; Berry et al., 1992; Murdock,
Ford, & Hudson, 1971). Laypersons use the concept
of culture to describe and explain a broad range of
activities, behaviors, events, and structures.
Over the years, many scholars have attempted
to define culture. Tylor (1865) defined culture as
all capabilities and habits learned as members of a
society. Linton (1936) referred to culture as social
heredity. Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952/1963)
defined culture as patterns of and for behavior

acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting
the distinct achievements of human groups, includ-
ing their embodiments in artifacts. Rohner (1984)
defined culture as the totality of equivalent and
complementary learned meanings maintained by a
human population, or by identifiable segments of
a population, and transmitted from one generation
to the next. Jahoda (1984) argued that culture is a
descriptive term that captures not only rules and
meanings but also behaviors. Pelto and Pelto (1975)
defined culture in terms of personality, whereas
Geertz (1975) defined it as shared symbol systems
transcending individuals. Berry et al. (1992) defined
culture simply as the shared way of life of a group of
people, and Baumeister (2005) defined culture as an
information-based system that allows people to live
together and to satisfy their needs.
Culture has been defined in many diverse
ways because the concept of culture covers broad
domains related to almost anything and everything
about human activities or products. Moreover,
contemporary cultures are changing and evolving
quickly; thus, defining cultures is challenging. We
define culture as a unique meaning and information
system, shared by a group and transmitted across
generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs
of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and
derive meaning from life.
Culture exists first to enable groups to meet basic
needs of survival. Culture helps people meet others,
procreate and produce offspring, put food on the
table, provide shelter from the elements, and care
for our daily biological essential needs. However,
human culture also allows for complex social net-
works and relationships, and provides rules to regu-
late and reduce (but not eliminate) the inevitable
conflicts that emerge. It allows humans to enhance
the meaning of normal, daily activities. It allows
the pursuit of happiness. It allows humans to be
creative in music, art, and drama; to seek recreation
and to engage in sports and organized competition,
whether in the local community Little League or
the Olympic Games; to search the sea and space;
and to create mathematics, an achievement no other
species can claim, as well as an educational system.
Human culture allows people to go to the moon, to
create a research laboratory on Antarctica, and to
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
send probes to Mars and Jupiter. Unfortunately, it
also allows humans to have wars, to create weapons
of mass destruction, and to create terrorists.
Human culture does all this by creating and
maintaining complex social systems, institutionaliz-
ing and improving cultural practices, creating beliefs
about the world, and communicating the meaning
system to other humans and subsequent genera-
tions. It is the product of the evolution of the human
mind and complex cognitive abilities in response
to the specific ecologies in which groups live and
the resources available to them to live. Culture as
a meaning and information system results from
the interaction between universal biological needs
and functions, universal social problems created to
address those needs, and the ecological environ-
ment in which people live. Culture is a solution to
the problem of groups’ adaptations to their contexts
to address their social motives and biological needs.
As adaptational responses to the environment, cul-
tures help to select behaviors, attitudes, values, and
opinions that may optimize the tapping of resources
to meet survival needs. Those guidelines are passed
along from one generation to the next so that future
generations do not have to keep reinventing the
wheel. Cultural products are always ratcheted up,
never down.
The Elements of Culture
The elements of culture can be divided roughly into
two major categories—the objective and subjec-
tive elements (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952/1963;
Triandis, 1972). The objective elements of culture
involve objective, explicit elements that are physi-
cal, such as architecture, clothes, foods, art, eating
utensils, and the like; objective elements of culture
typically survive people as physical artifacts. The
subjective elements of culture include all those
parts of a culture that do not survive people as
physical artifacts; thus, they include psychological
processes such as attitudes, values, beliefs, norms,
and such. Understanding the cultural bases of
nonverbal communication requires a focus on the
subjective elements of culture.
Many domains of the subjective elements of
culture have been studied, such as values (Hofstede,
2001; Schwartz, 2004), beliefs (M. H. Bond et al.,
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Matsumoto and Hwang
2004; Leung et al., 2002), attitudes, worldviews and
self-concepts (Heine & Hamamura, 2007; Sedikides,
Gaertner, & Vevea, 2005), and norms. Of these
various domains, norms are the most relevant for
our discussion. Norms are generally accepted stan-
dards of behavior for any cultural group. Norms
comprise behaviors that members of a culture have
defined as the most appropriate in any given situ-
ation. Recent research has uncovered norms for
describing the behaviors of people of other cul-
tures (Shteynberg, Gelfand, & Kim, 2009) as well
as norms for controlling one’s expressive behavior
when emotional (Matsumoto, Yoo, et al., 2009;
Matsumoto et al., 2008).
Not only do norms proscribe socially appro-
priate, desirable behaviors but they also define
what is inappropriate and undesirable. Thus,
cultures generate social sanctions and punish-
ments for norm transgressions. These sanctions
and punishments may be explicit, as in the letter
of the law and jail time, to implicit, such as social
isolation.
Normal behavior is related to social rituals in
cultures. Rituals are culturally prescribed conduct
or any kind of established procedure or routine.
These include rituals for greetings, daily functions,
or religious ceremonies. Rituals are important
because they reinforce cultural meaning systems.
Some rituals are related to politeness, and many
cultures reify norms of politeness in shared behav-
ioral patterns called etiquette. This is a code of
behavior that describes expectations for social
behavior according to contemporary cultural
and conventional norms within a cultural group.
Etiquette is a large part of many cultures, although
cultures often differ in what is polite and, thus,
appropriate and “good.” Etiquette-related behav-
iors are considered signs of maturity and sanity
within each culture.
An important dimension of cultural vari-
ability with respect to norms involves a concept
known as tightness versus looseness (Pelto, 1968).
Tightness–looseness has two key components: the
strength of social norms, or how clear and pervasive
norms are within societies, and the strength of sanc-
tioning, or how much tolerance there is for deviance
from norms within societies. Pelto (1968) argued
82
that traditional societies varied in their expression
of and adherence to social norms. In his work, the
Pueblo Indians, Hutterites, and the Japanese are
examples of tight societies in which norms were
expressed very clearly and in which severe sanc-
tions were imposed on those who deviated from
norms. By contrast, he identified the Skolt Lapps of
northern Finland and the Thais as loose societies, in
which norms were expressed through a wide variety
of alternative channels and in which there was a
general lack of formality, order, and discipline and a
high tolerance for deviant behavior (see also Gelfand
et al., 2011).
CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON BEHAVIORS:
THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT
Out of all the myriad behaviors possible in the
human repertoire, cultures help to focus people’s
behaviors and attention on a few limited alterna-
tives to maximize their effectiveness, given their
resources and their environment (Poortinga, 1990).
Culture can be viewed as influencing behaviors
in several ways, depending on whether culture is
viewed as antecedent to or a consequence of behav-
ior, and whether culture is viewed as an enabler
or restrictor of behavior (Lonner & Adamapolous,
2000). Culture can be understood as enabling some
behaviors or restricting others, and via the
construction of rules that enable behavior or restrict
behavior (see Table 4.1).
Culture influences behavior by creating norms
through an important mediator: context. As inher-
ently social animals, humans live in a succession
of multiple, different contexts. Cultures produce
norms by imbuing contexts with specific meaning
and information concerning appropriate and inap-
propriate ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
There are many different aspects of context, includ-
ing time, place, interactants, the content of activities
or conversations, the reasons why the interactions
are occurring in the first place, and the possibility
of any future interactions between the same inter-
actants. All of these factors combine to produce the
unique contexts in which we live our lives. Next, we
focus on two major components of context: settings
and social roles.

TABLE 4.1
Different Types of Cultural Influences on Behaviors in Context
Culture viewed as Inventing behavior
Restricting behavior
Note. From Handbook of Culture and Psychology (p. 29), by D. Matsumoto, 2000, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press. Adapted with permission.
Settings
Cultures ascribe meanings to settings. Because dif-
ferent settings are associated with different cultural
meanings, these differences influence behavior.
Being in public, for example, means something dif-
ferent than being in private, and individuals regulate
their behaviors much more in public than in private
(Matsumoto, 2012). The regulating effect of public
settings may be due to the fact that being in public
is associated with the cognitive representation that
others have knowledge of oneself and can make
causal attributions and judgments about oneself
(Baumeister, 2005; Tomasello, 1999). Thus, people
watch what they do because they are concerned
about how they will be judged by others. This con-
cern is also likely activated in the mirror effect—the
fact that individuals often regulate various aspects
of their behavior when they see themselves as others
see them (Mor & Winquist, 2002).
Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the
importance of setting, there has been very little
research in psychology on this topic. Years ago,
Altman (1975) differentiated between primary
and secondary private settings, the former being
those that people feel belong to them exclusively
and are central to their identities, the latter being
public settings that are used with such regularity
that one develops a proprietary orientation toward
them (see also Chapter 8, this handbook).
We believe that the cultural meaning of settings
revolves around three components: beliefs about being
watched, uncertainty, and anxiety. Settings are associ-
ated with a set of beliefs about the degree to which
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
Culture viewed as
Antecedent to behavior Consequence of behavior
Culture as an enabling cause of Culture as the construction of
behavior rules that enable behavior
Culture as a restrictive cause of Culture as the construction of
behavior rules that restrict behavior
others may be watching or judging oneself and oth-
ers associated with oneself (e.g., one’s family, friends,
others of the same ethnic group, etc.). These may also
include beliefs concerning the degree to which the
judgments of others have potentially positive or nega-
tive consequences for oneself or others, and conse-
quences to future relationships with oneself or others.
Settings are also associated with some degree of
uncertainty, especially concerning one’s knowledge
about how others may think, feel, or act. Because
of this uncertainty, different settings are associated
with different degrees of anxiety about how others
may evaluate oneself. Uncertainty and ambigu-
ity inherent to settings, and the anxiety associated
with them, are likely to produce regulatory effects
on behavior. Guerin (1986) suggested that inhibi-
tory contexts, in which the emotions, behaviors,
cognitions, and intentions of others are uncertain,
influence individuals to be more cautious of their
behaviors. Inhibitory contexts are those in which
one’s behaviors are under the watchful eyes of
unknown or less familiar others, and such contexts
produce increased conformity in behaviors to
cultural norms because of the observation.
Because settings are associated with beliefs that
others may be judging oneself and that those beliefs
have potentially important consequences for oneself
and others, they are likely to produce a high degree
of regulatory effects on behavior. Norms are cre-
ated to provide this regulation. Settings associated
with the belief that one’s behavior is not judged,
that judgments of others have no consequences for
oneself, and/or in which there is little ambiguity of
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Matsumoto and Hwang
the actions of others are likely to produce much less
regulatory effects on behavior (e.g., the anonymity
of the Internet or a dark theater). Being in a crowded
company conference room with one’s prospective
employers is a very different setting than being in an
anonymous Internet chat room, and because of these
psychological differences in the meaning of these
settings, they produce different effects on behavior.
Interactants and Social Roles
Cultures ascribe meaning to individuals and their
social roles. Social roles define the expectations for
behavior for individuals who occupy a position in a
social system. These expectations define the behaviors
that each culture expects its members to engage in to
achieve the goal of living in a culturally appropriate
fashion. Social roles are like scripts in a play (Goffman,
1959), as they delineate the types of behaviors that are
expected in specific situational contexts based on the
specific meanings ascribed to that context. Because
cultures define the meaning of situational contexts,
the scripts associated with the contexts are cultur-
ally dependent. Cultural differences in the meaning
of specific situational contexts reflect cultural differ-
ences in the specific role expectations associated with
different situations across cultures.
The interaction between individuals with
different social roles produces different culturally
prescribed meanings to interactions. At least two
studies have examined what these meanings may
be. Marwell and Hage (1970), for instance, sug-
gested the existence of three dimensions to describe
the nature of role dyads: Intimacy, Visibility, and
Regulation. McAuley, Bond, and Kashima (2002)
obtained ratings of role dyads in Australia and
Hong Kong and demonstrated the existence of four
dimensions used by persons of both cultures to
organize these relationships: Complexity, Equality,
Adversarialness, and Containment.
Summary
Mental processes and behaviors do not occur in a
vacuum, even in the laboratory (or, perhaps, espe-
cially in the laboratory); rather, they occur in a
particular setting with specific interactants, both
of which have been imbued with cultural meaning.
Norm-driven human behaviors can be considered
84
role performances within a specific context. Cul-
tures create overall and context-specific norms to
aid humans to achieve social coordination and to
avoid social chaos in a socially complex environ-
ment. Cultural norms are learned rules for think-
ing, feeling, and behaving in specific contexts that
provide guidelines and rewards for acceptable
behaviors, and sanctions and punishments for unac-
ceptable behavior. Many norms have to do with the
regulation of expressive behavior, which is associ-
ated with nonverbal behaviors and nonverbal com-
munication. Nonverbal communication cannot exist
without some basis of culture as we communicate
with others verbally and nonverbally to convey
information and to share intentions. Thus, culture
and nonverbal communication are dependent on
and influential to each other simultaneously.
CULTURAL REGULATION OF NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION
Understanding how and why cultures regulate non-
verbal communication requires a basic understand-
ing of the function of communication in general.
Humans have a very complex and differentiated sig-
nal system in the body, including face, voice, gesture,
and whole body movements. Although other animals
share the same channels of behavior, human capabil-
ities in these channels, especially the face and voice,
are considerably more elaborate than those of non-
human animals. Moreover human communication
involves the unique use of verbal language. As men-
tioned earlier, the evolution of these communicative
abilities coincide with the evolution of the human
brain and correspond to the evolution of self–other
knowledge and the ability to know that other people
not only are intentional agents but can share inten-
tions (Tomasello et al., 1993). Therefore, we under-
stand the function of communication to be for the
purpose of facilitating the sharing of social inten-
tions. Further, we assume that evolved capabilities
for language and other modes of expressive behavior
occurred to facilitate human sharing of social inten-
tions. The sharing of social intentions allows humans
to achieve social coordination and reduces the
possibility of social chaos, in turn facilitating group
efficiency and ultimately impacting survival.
 The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication

Cultural influences on communication should
affect both verbal and nonverbal communication.
With regard to the latter, we propose that cultures
produce norms that provide guidelines for the
appropriate expression of nonverbal behaviors and
other forms of nonverbal communication in specific
contexts to facilitate the sharing of social intentions.
Culturally moderated nonverbal behaviors, in turn,
increase social coordination and reduce social chaos,
thereby facilitating group efficiency and survival
(see Figure 4.1).
In broad terms, cultures have norms related to
overall expressivity that is encouraged or discour-
aged in specific cultures (see Table 4.2). Expressive
cultures are likely to facilitate the greater use of
nonverbal behaviors. These cultures have developed
norms that encourage the broad, outward expres-
sion of nonverbal behaviors, such as more animated
facial expressions and gestures, voices with higher
intensity and range, direct gaze, relaxed and open
postures, and closer interpersonal spacing. These
norms have evolved over time because they served
a purpose in specific ecological and environmen-
tal contexts that facilitated group efficiency, social
coordination, and the sharing of intentions, all of
which ultimately impacted survival. Reserved cul-
tures are more likely to facilitate the relatively less
use of nonverbal behaviors. These cultures have
developed norms that encourage restricting one’s
expressive behaviors, facial expressions, and ges-
tures and that use softer voices and avoid direct
gaze, with more rigid, closed postures at relatively
greater distances. These norms also evolved over
time because they served a purpose in specific eco-
logical and environmental contexts that facilitated
group efficiency, social coordination, and the shar-
ing of intentions, all of which ultimately impacted
survival. Nonverbal behaviors serve the same general
function across cultures (i.e., to facilitate the sharing
of social intentions); however, the norms governing
those behaviors (i.e., to be expressive or reserved)
differ depending on the ecological–cultural context
within which those behaviors occur.
The distinction between Expressive and Reserved
cultures is related to Hall’s (1966, 1973) distinction
of high- and low-context cultures, as well as Watson’s
(Watson, 1970; Watson & Graves, 1966) classifica-
tion of contact and noncontact cultures. Our dis-
tinction is different, however, as we believe there is
sufficient evidence to suggest that cultural differences
encompass the entire constellation of nonverbal
behaviors involved in interaction. At the same time,
we do not believe that there is a unidimensional, pos-
itive relationship among all of the various channels

Social
Complexity
Increases Decreases

Need for
Social Order

Culture as a
Socially Appropriate
Group Life Meaning and
Behavior
Information System

Norms Regarding
Nonverbal
Communication

Nonverbal Facilitates
Behaviors

FIGURE 4.1.  The function of nonverbal communication vis-à-vis the function of culture.

85
Matsumoto and Hwang

TABLE 4.2

A Typology of Broad Cultural Differences in Nonverbal Behaviors

Type of cultural norms

Channel Expressive Reserved
Face Animated facial expressions, frequent Fewer facial expressions, less emotions,
displays of emotions, use of face to more controlled expressions, less
amplify and illustrate speech animated expressions
Gesture More speech illustrating gestures, larger Fewer speech illustrating gestures, smaller
motions, higher frequency of emblem motions, lower frequency of emblem
usage usage
Voice Louder voices, larger range, higher speech Softer voices, diminished range, lower
rates speech rates
Gaze More direct gaze during interactions Less direct gaze during interactions
Interpersonal space and touch Closer distances in interaction, more Farther distances in interaction, less
frequent touching frequent touching
Posture More relaxed, open postures More rigid, closed postures

of nonverbal behaviors or that cultural norms exist
only for overall expressivity. Cultures also facilitate
more or less behaviors differentially across channels
(facial expressions, eye behavior, body behavior), and
there are specific norms for specific channels in spe-
cific contexts, and these depend on the channel and
behavior being regulated and their function. We next
discuss what the available evidence suggests in terms
of channel and context specificity for cultural norms.
Cultural Norms Concerning Emotions and
Emotional Expressions
Culturally moderated emotions.  The channel that
has been studied the most with regard to cultural differ-
ences and norms is that of emotional expressions, espe-
cially in the face. Cultures create norms concerning
the regulation of emotion and emotional expressions
to facilitate social coordination through the sharing of
intentions because emotions are primary motivators of
behavior (Tomkins, 1962, 1963) and have important
social functions (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). By regulat-
ing emotions via norms, cultures ensure that behaviors
follow culturally prescribed scripts, increasing social
coordination and decreasing social chaos.
Culturally driven expression regulation occurs
in multiple ways. First, culture regulates expres-
sive behaviors by calibrating the emotion system to
culturally available events so that individuals learn
what to become emotional about in the first place.
Culturally moderated emotions provide guidelines
to individuals for the kinds of emotions they should
have in specific contexts, in turn regulating the kinds
of expressive behavior that will be produced because
of differences in emotional reactions. Walking on
dark streets late at night will evoke fear in some cul-
tures but not in others, and these different emotional
reactions occur because of culturally learned differ-
ences about the meaning of that specific context.
Differences in expressive behavior, in turn, fall out of
these differences in evoked emotions.
Cultural display rule norms.  Culture also regu-
lates the nonverbal expressive behaviors that occur
as a result of emotion elicitation so that individuals
learn what kinds of emotional reactions to have after
an emotion is elicited and the range of acceptable
behaviors for individuals to engage in after emotions
occur. The norms governing these rules of expressive
displays are known as cultural display rules (Ekman &
Friesen, 1969), and they account for cultural differ-
ences in emotional expression. These are rules learned
early in childhood that help individuals manage
and modify their emotional expressions depending
on social circumstances. They were first invoked to
explain the cultural differences in expressive behavior
that occurred in Friesen’s (1972) study comparing
the facial expressions of emotion of American and
Japanese students as they watched emotionally evoca-
tive films (see also Chapter 10, this handbook).

86

After the original inception of the concept of
display rules, cross-cultural research on them was
dormant until Matsumoto’s (1990) study examin-
ing display rules in Americans and Japanese, and
a similar study documenting differences in display
rules among four ethnic groups within the United
States (Matsumoto, 1993). Later, Matsumoto and col-
leagues created the Display Rule Assessment Inven-
tory, where participants choose one of six behavioral
responses when they experience different emo-
tions with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers
(Matsumoto, Takeuchi, Andayani, Kouznetsova, &
Krupp, 1998; Matsumoto, Yoo, Hirayama, &
Petrova, 2005). They demonstrated cultural differ-
ences in display rules, and they provided evidence
for its internal and temporal reliability and for its
content, convergent, discriminant, external, and
concurrent predictive validity with personality.
Individuals of all cultures learn some degree of
overall expression regulation through display rules.
The existence of overall expression regulation via
Zimbabwe
0.51
Overall Expressivity Endorsement
Mexico Brazil
0.48 Portugal
People’s Republic of China
Turkey Japan
0.45
South Korea Lebanon Germany
Croatia
Malaysia
Russia
Indonesia
0.42
Hong Kong
0.39
20 40
Individualism
FIGURE 4.2.  Graphical representation of the relationship between indi-
vidualism and overall expressivity endorsement. From “Mapping Expressive
Differences Around the World: The Relationship Between Emotional Display
Rules and Individualism Versus Collectivism,” by D. Matsumoto et al., 2008,
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39, p. 66. Copyright 2008 by Sage.
Reprinted with permission.
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
display rule norms across contexts is consistent
with the idea of Expressive versus Reserved cultures
described earlier and with worldwide data concern-
ing display rules. Matsumoto et al. (2008) examined
universal and culture-specific aspects to display rules
in more than 30 countries, reporting several pancul-
tural effects. Individuals of all cultures reported that
they suppress their expressions in some contexts,
exaggerate their expressions in others, and express
their feelings as is in others. Individuals of all cul-
tures had a display rule norm for greater expressivity
toward ingroups than toward outgroups. However,
there were also cultural differences, especially linked
to culture-level individualism versus collectivism.
Collectivistic cultures were associated with less
expressivity overall than individualistic cultures,
suggesting that overall expression management for
all emotions is central to the preservation of social
order in these cultures (see Figure 4.2). This find-
ing is commensurate with the behavioral results
from previous studies (Friesen, 1972; Matsumoto &
Canada USA
Australia
Denmark
New Zealand
Belgium
India Hungary
Netherlands
Poland
Israel Italy
Switzerland
60 80 100
87
Matsumoto and Hwang
Kupperbusch, 2001; Matsumoto, Willingham, &
Olide, 2009). Individualism was positively associ-
ated with higher expressivity norms in general and
for positive emotions in particular.
Furthermore, there were culture- and context-
specificity in display rule norms. Individualism was
positively associated with endorsement of expres-
sions of all emotions toward ingroups but was nega-
tively correlated with negative emotions and was
positively correlated with happiness and surprise
toward outgroups. Thus, people in individualistic
cultures learn to express their emotions to their
ingroup members, whereas people in collectivistic
cultures learn to suppress or regulate their expres-
sions, even to their ingroups. Toward outgroups,
people in individualistic cultures learn to express
less negative and more positive emotions, whereas
people in collectivistic cultures learn to express
more negative and less positive ones. Cumulatively,
these findings suggest a fairly nuanced view of the
relationship between culture and display rules that
varies as a function of type of emotion, context, and
culture (Matsumoto et al., 2008).
Cultural Norms Regarding the Perception
of Other’s Emotional Expressions
As discussed in Chapter 10, there are many cross-
cultural similarities in how facial expressions of
emotions are perceived. Not only are the seven uni-
versal facial expressions panculturally recognized
(Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Matsumoto, 2001) but
there is pancultural similarity in judgments of rela-
tive intensity among faces; that is, when comparing
expressions, people of different countries agree on
which is more strongly expressed (Ekman et al.,
1987; Matsumoto & Ekman, 1989). There is also
cross-cultural agreement in the association between
perceived expression intensity and inferences
about subjective experiences (Matsumoto, Kasri, &
Kooken, 1999) and in the secondary emotions por-
trayed in an expression (Biehl et al., 1997; Ekman
et al., 1987; Matsumoto & Ekman, 1989). This agree-
ment may exist because of overlap in the semantics of
the emotion categories, antecedents and elicitors of
emotion, or in the facial configurations themselves.
However, there are cultural differences in
emotion judgments as well, and these differences
88
presumably occur because of differential cultural
norms that govern how the emotional expressions
of others should be interpreted. For example there
are cultural differences in the absolute levels of rec-
ognition across cultures; Americans typically have
higher agreement rates when judging emotions than
observers from other countries (Biehl et al., 1997;
Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Matsumoto, 1989, 1992;
Matsumoto et al., 2002). There are also cultural dif-
ferences in ratings of the intensity of expressions; for
example, Japanese tend to rate expressions lower in
intensity than Americans (Biehl et al., 1997; Ekman
et al., 1987; Matsumoto, 1990, 1993; Matsumoto
et al., 1999, 2002). Presumably some cultures facilitate
the perception and interpretation of others’ emotional
expressions, whereas others do not. These cultural dif-
ferences likely occur in service to communication style
preferences across cultures that allow for the sharing
of social intentions but in different ways.
One aspect of communication that is culturally
moderated refers to the degree to which cultures
moderate the relative contributions of context when
judging others’ emotions. Despite the fact that facial
expressions always occur in context in real life,
most mono- or cross-cultural judgment studies pre-
sented them fairly acontextually. Writers have long
debated the relative contribution of face and context
in contributing to emotion messages by studying
congruent and incongruent face–context combina-
tions (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954; Ekman & O’Sullivan,
1988; Fernberger, 1928; Russell & Fehr, 1987).
One type of study examines the linkage between an
emotion-eliciting context and a facial expression,
which we have called response linkage (Matsumoto &
Hwang, 2010). Studies involving congruent response
linkages have found an additive effect (Bruner &
Tagiuri, 1954; Knudsen & Muzekari, 1983), which
probably occurred because of the increased signal
clarity in the overall emotion message when two
different signal sources provide the same message.
Interestingly, studies involving incongruent response
linkages have generally demonstrated a face pri-
macy effect, indicating that the signals in the face
tend to override the signals provided by the context
(Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1988; Ekman, O’Sullivan, &
Matsumoto, 1991; Frijda, 1969; Goldberg, 1951;
Nakamura, Buck, & Kenny, 1990).

Context effects also exist. Masuda et al. (2008)
presented faces depicting emotions imbedded
within a group of other faces also depicting emo-
tions, and they asked American and Japanese
observers to label the emotion of the central figure.
Americans were more likely to produce labels con-
sistent with the central figure despite the emotions
portrayed by the others, whereas Japanese were
more influenced by the others’ expressions when
labeling the central figure.
To clarify this literature, Matsumoto, Hwang,
and Yamada (2012) conducted two studies involv-
ing observers from the United States, Japan, and
South Korea who judged facial expressions of anger,
sadness, and happiness presented together with a
congruent or incongruent emotion-eliciting con-
text. When faces were congruent with contexts, the
agreement rates in judgments were near perfect,
with no cultural differences. This suggested that
previously documented cultural differences in emo-
tion recognition rates may have been the result of
methodological artifacts because observers were
asked to make judgments of emotion solely from
faces. In reality, such judgments are made from cues
from both faces and contexts, and when multiple
cues are given, cultural differences are eliminated.
When faces and contexts were incongruent, there
were both face and context effects, and the relative
contributions of each were moderated by culture.
American judgments were more influenced by faces,
whereas Japanese and South Korean judgments were
more influenced by context. The results provided
a more nuanced view of how culture and type of
emotion moderate judgments of faces in context by
showing how face and context effects occur simulta-
neously, and how both cultural similarities and
differences existed in the judgments.
Cultures create norms concerning the regulation
of emotion and emotional expressions to facilitate
social coordination by sharing social intentions
because emotions are primary motivators of behav-
ior (Tomkins, 1962, 1963) and have important
social functions (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). Cultures
achieve emotional expression regulation by moder-
ating the types of emotions people have in specific
contexts in the first place, by regulating people’s
expressive behaviors when emotions are elicited
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
(via cultural display rules), and by regulating the
way in which people perceive the emotional expres-
sions of others. Norms facilitating these cultural
differences are often specific to the type of emotion
(because different emotions have different func-
tions and prime different behaviors) and context
(setting, interactant) in which emotions are elicited,
and they are even specific to gender (see Chapter 6,
this handbook). This degree of specificity occurs in
response to the complexity of the emotion system
and its functions. Cultural norms regulating this
system serve the purpose of allowing individual
members to share social intentions, thereby
facilitating social coordination.
Cultural Norms Concerning Gestures
As described in Chapter 12 in this handbook,
gestures are body movements (primarily hands,
although they occur in head and face as well) that
are used as part of the human communication sys-
tem. Gestures are interesting because they are a form
of embodied cognition; that is, they are movements
that express some kind of thought or the process of
thinking (Kinsbourne, 2006). They likely coevolved
with adaptations in our physical anatomy and cogni-
tive and language capabilities (Bouissac, 2006). This
allowed for more rapid and efficient communication
systems that went beyond words and verbal language
(Capirci & Volterra, 2008).
Two types of gestures are those that co-occur
with speech, called speech illustrators, and those that
can occur independent of speech, called emblems.
The functions of these two types of gestures dif-
fer; thus, the functions associated with the cultural
regulation (via cultural norms) of these two types of
gestures differ.
Cultural norms for speech illustrators.  Speech
illustrators are movements that are directly tied
to speech and illustrate or highlight what is being
said. There are different types of speech illustrators
(Efron, 1941; Freedman & Hoffman, 1967); all are
associated with verbal behavior on a moment-to-
moment basis (Kita et al., 2007) and are directly
tied to speech content, verbal meaning, and voice
volume. They likely occur outside of or with
minimal conscious awareness and intention.
89
Matsumoto and Hwang
The study of culture and gestures has its roots
in the work of Efron (Boas, Efron, & Foley, 1936;
Efron, 1941), who examined the gestures of Sicil-
ian and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants in New York
City. Efron found that there were distinct gestures
among immigrant Jews and Italians who adhered to
the traditional culture but that those gestures dis-
appeared as people were more assimilated into the
larger American culture, and their children adopted
the illustrators typical of Americans.
The meaning and function of illustrators are
likely similar across cultures and are likely a biologi-
cally innate product of our evolved capability for
speech. However, cultures differ in norms concern-
ing the appropriateness of both the amount and
form of illustrative gestures, and in the frequency
of illustrator usage, expansiveness, and duration.
Expressive cultures, such as Latin American and the
Middle Eastern cultures, encourage the use of large,
illustrative gestures when speaking; they are highly
animated in their gesticulation (Kendon, 1992,
1995). In Italy, for instance, one is expected to
“speak with your hands.” Other cultures are much
more reserved in their use of gestures. The British,
for example, gesticulate less than Italians when
speaking (Graham & Argyle, 1975), and large ges-
tures are considered impolite in British culture. East
Asian cultures discourage the use of such gestures,
especially when in public; thus, Asians are even
more reserved in their gesticulation. As mentioned
previously, differences in cultural norms for overall
expressivity are likely related to preferences in com-
munication styles developed in different ecologies to
facilitate the social sharing of intentions.
Cultural differences also exist in the forms of
illustrators. When counting, for example, Germans
use the thumb for one, whereas Canadians and
Americans use the index finger (Pika, Nicoladis, &
Marentette, 2009). People of different cultures
also use different gestures while describing motion
events (Kita, 2000; Kita & Ozyurek, 2003; McNeill,
2000). When pointing, people in the United States
and many Western European cultures use the index
finger. People of some other cultures, however,
learn to point with their middle finger, which of
course resembles an obscene gesture in many cul-
tures. Each of these different forms likely developed
90
for a particular reason in a culture, with the goal
of facilitating the social sharing of intentions. Even
though that reason has probably long disappeared,
the forms of the gesture likely remain through
cultural transmission across generations.
Hybrid gestures refer to gestures that are origi-
nally associated with one language but come to be
used with another, and they occur among immi-
grants and bi- or multilingual individuals. They
were first observed by Efron (1941), who reported
about a U.S.-born, Eastern Jewish individual who
used a classical Eastern Jewish culture gesture
(fist clenched, thumb outstretched, describing a
scooping motion in the air as if digging out an idea)
even when speaking English. Another type of hybrid
gesture was described by Morris, Collett, Marsh,
and O’Shaughnessy (1980), who described the com-
bining of two different gestures (the flat hand chop
threat gesture of Tunisia combined with the A-OK
ring gesture to produce a ring-chop hybrid gesture).
Other studies have documented that immigrants
often use gestures from their original culture when
using their second language (Scheflen, 1972). This
cross-linguistic transfer of gestures seems to occur
from a high-frequency gesture culture to a low-
frequency culture (Pika, Nicoladis, & Marentette,
2006) and, again, occurs because of the need to
share intentions with others. As the cultural back-
grounds of the others with whom intentions are
shared are different, the gestures also need to evolve.
Cultural norms for emblems.  Emblems are ges-
tures that convey verbal meaning independent of
words. These are also known as symbolic gestures
or emblematic gestures. Just as every culture has its
own verbal language, every culture develops its own
emblem vocabulary in gestures. Emblematic ges-
tures are culture specific (and some are gender spe-
cific; see Ekman, 1976; Friesen, Ekman, & Wallbott,
1979; Morris et al., 1980). Unlike illustrators,
emblems can occur with or without speech.
Because emblems are like speech, cultures pro-
duce norms for their development and usage just
as they do for words. Like words, emblems are pro-
duced to facilitate the sharing of social intentions.
Furthermore, just as different cultures facilitate the
differential use of vocal chords to produce different

sounds and different symbols to produce words,
they produce different symbolic gestures to rep-
resent words nonverbally, such as the peace sign
(forefinger and middle finger up, palm facing out-
ward or inward) or OK (thumb up, hand in fist)
in North American culture.
Because emblems are culture-specific, their mean-
ings across cultures are often different and some-
times offensive. The North American A-OK sign, for
example, means “OK” in some cultures, an orifice
having sexual implications in some cultures, “money”
in some cultures, and “zero” in some cultures (Morris
et al., 1980). Placing both hands at the side of one’s
head and pointing upward with the forefingers signals
that one is angry in some cultures; in others it refers
to the devil; and in others it means that one wants sex
(is horny). The reversed peace sign—forefinger and
middle finger up in a “V” shape, with the palm facing
inward—is an insult in England and Australia mean-
ing “screw you.” Thus, when emblems are interpreted
across cultures, there is large probability that indi-
viduals will misinterpret the sender’s meaning of the
emblem. Yet, they serve a functional purpose within
the culture in which it is used, and that is to facilitate
the social sharing of intentions.
In addition to the hands, humans also gesture
with their heads, the most common of which are
the emblems “yes” and “no.” In the United States, as
in many cultures of the world, these head gestures
are nods and shakes of the head. However, whereas
most people of most cultures nod their head yes and
shake their head no, some cultures of the world do
not do so. We also gesture with our bodies. In the
United States and many other cultures, the emblem
for “I don’t know” is a shrug. Shrugs are often dis-
played in our shoulders but also by our hands or
even our faces.
Although the movements associated with emblems
are culture specific, there is universality in the con-
tent themes, functions, and reasons why cultures have
a rich vocabulary of emblems (Matsumoto & Hwang,
2013a; Morris et al., 1980). Rituals concerning greet-
ings and salutations, references to locomotion or
mental states, and insults are aspects of life that occur
in all cultures, and for which it would be convenient
to be able to signal without words. Thus, all cultures
develop some emblems for these universal aspects of
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
life. The specifics of the movements associated with
each emblem are different, however, as these are
influenced by national and linguistic boundaries,
cultural influx across history due to wars or
immigration, and the richness of the word or phrase
signaled in the verbal dictionaries of the cultures
(Morris et al., 1980).
Morris et al. (1980) argued that some emblems
arose from gesturing particular symbols. For
example, the crossed fingers for good luck was origi-
nally a surreptitious “sign of the cross” to signal to
another one was a Christian, and then it became just
the sign of the cross to ward off Satan, and now it is
just “good luck.” Interestingly, the crossed fingers
emblem did not occur in non-Christian cultures in
Morris et al.’s study.
Morris et al. (1980) called other emblems “relic”
emblems in that they were trace representations of
specific behaviors; for example, the Greek “moutza”
is an insult emblem that involves a forward hand
gesture, palm outward, with fingers spread upward.
It was the original “talk to the hand” that we now
see with younger people. The moutza is a represen-
tation of tossing garbage or urine, or possibly wip-
ing cinders or other effluent on the face of another.
Its origins were thought to be in ancient Greece
where the public would toss their garbage or urine
on prisoners as they were transported through the
streets. This no longer occurs, but that gesture
remains as a relic of that action, and today is used as
an insult or a curse.
Some emblems are becoming recognized across
cultural boundaries despite differences in origin,
such as come, go, hello, goodbye, yes, and no
(Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013a). These results are
likely being driven by the strong influence of mass
media around the world, particularly television,
movies, and the Internet, where people can view the
behaviors of others of different cultures and learn
how to decode behaviors. These technologies may
be helping to homogenize gestures into a world-
wide emblem dictionary, and if so, it may be only a
matter of time that a homogenized, universal set of
emblematic gestures replaces culture-specific ones.
Regardless of how emblems evolve across time,
however, they will continue to serve the function of
facilitating the social sharing of intentions.
91
Matsumoto and Hwang
Many emblems are associated with nonverbal
greetings. In most cultures, forms of greetings are
important social rituals that bond people together.
Many cultures differ, however, in the specific form
of the greeting, such as the eyebrow flash, the hand-
shake, the bow, bringing the hands together as if in
prayer and bowing, and the like. These differences in
forms probably arose because of context-specific dif-
ferences in the past that had some kind of meaning at
that time and that have been transmitted across gen-
erations and continue to currently survive. Regardless
of the differences in form, however, there is underly-
ing universality in the function of these nonverbal
social greetings as an important part of every culture.
Cultural Norms for Gaze
Gaze is a powerful nonverbal behavior, most likely
because of its evolutionary roots in animals (see also
Chapter 13, this handbook). Gaze is associated with
dominance, power, or aggression in both humans
and nonhuman animals (Fehr & Exline, 1987) as
well as affiliation and nurturance (Argyle & Cook,
1976). The affiliative aspects of gazing begin in
infancy (Fehr & Exline, 1987), as infants attend to
adults as their source of care and protection.
All cultures create norms concerning gaze
because both aggression and affiliation are behav-
ioral tendencies that are important for group stabil-
ity and maintenance. Cultures differ according to
whether they encourage or discourage power and
status differences in a hierarchy, with hierarchical
cultures affording power to status, but egalitarian
cultures not (Hofstede, 2001; Schwartz & Bardi,
2001). Commensurately, cultures differ in the
amounts of gaze considered appropriate when inter-
acting with others. Arabs, for example, gaze much
longer and more directly at their partners than do
Americans (Hall, 1963; Watson & Graves, 1966).
Watson (1970), who classified 30 countries as either
a contact culture (those that facilitated physical
touch during interaction) or a noncontact culture,
found that contact cultures engaged in more gazing
and had more direct orientations when interacting
with others, less interpersonal distance, and more
touching. Within the United States, ethnic groups
differ in gaze and visual behavior (Exline, Jones, &
Maciorowski, 1977; LaFrance & Mayo, 1976).
92
Status-oriented, hierarchical cultures have
norms for members to avert gaze when interacting
with higher status others as a form of deference.
Egalitarian cultures tend to have norms for members
to “look the other in the eye” when talking. These
cultural differences can have dire consequences,
especially in credibility assessment or deception
detection. Around the world, a commonly held
belief is that when people are not looking one
straight in the eye, they are likely to be lying
(Global Deception Research Team, 2006). These
beliefs influence actual judgments; in one study
(C. F. Bond, Omar, Mahmoud, & Bonser, 1990),
American and Jordanians were videotaped while
telling lies and truths, and the videotapes were
shown to other Americans and Jordanians who
made truth/lie judgments. In both cultures, indi-
viduals who avoided eye contact were judged to be
deceptive. However, there is little or no empirical
support for the belief that gaze is reliably associated
with lying (DePaulo et al., 2003).
Cultural Norms for Vocal Behavior
Nonverbal vocal cues are called paralinguistic cues
and include the tone of voice, intonation, pitch,
speech rate, use of silence, and volume (see Chap-
ter 11, this handbook). Early work on paralinguistic
cues provided evidence that some specific emotional
states were conveyed through the voice across cultures
(Beier & Zautra, 1972; Matsumoto & Kishimoto,
1983; McCluskey & Albas, 1981; Scherer, 1986)—a
view that has garnered more support in recent work
(Sauter & Eimer, 2010; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, &
Scott, 2010; Simon-Thomas, Keltner, Sauter,
Sinicropi-Yao, & Abramson, 2009). Anger produces
a harsh edge to the voice; the voice gets louder, and
speech rates increase. Disgust produces “yuck” or
gagging sounds, whereas fear produces higher pitch
and sudden inhalations. Sadness produces softer
voices and decreased speech rates. Furthermore,
like some elements of emotional expression in the
face, there are elements in the emotion expression
in the voice that seem to be involuntary (Sauter &
Eimer, 2010).
The voice is used to illustrate and amplify
speech, and much like speech illustrating gestures,
cultures produce norms that moderate the use of

these vocal characteristics in social interaction.
Expressive cultures encourage the use of relatively
louder voices with higher speech rates, whereas
reserved cultures use softer voices with lower
speech rates, especially in specific contexts.
Additionally, pronunciations of some languages
require the production of different sounds and
rhythms in the voice that may be associated with
different emotions (e.g., the guttural quality of some
Germanic languages, the up and down rhythms
of Mandarin). Although these vocal cues sound
normal in the cultures in which they originated,
in other cultures, it is easy to have negative reac-
tions to these because they sound different and
are associated with aversive emotions.
Unfortunately, little cross-cultural research on
this topic exists. In one of the very few studies in
this area, Matsumoto and Hwang (2013b) compared
the vocal characteristics of European Americans
with Chinese, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern immi-
grants as they participated in various interviews
concerning a mock crime. Across all questions
and interviews, the Hispanic and Middle Eastern
immigrants consistently spoke with higher vocal
intensity and with higher speech rates than the Chi-
nese and European Americans. These cultural dif-
ferences open the door to examining how they may
be related to the facilitation of the social sharing of
intention differentially in different cultures.
Cultural Norms for Interpersonal Space
and Touch
The use of space in interpersonal interactions is
called proxemics (see Chapter 15, this handbook).
Hall’s (1966, 1973) classic work in this area speci-
fied four levels of interpersonal space use depend-
ing on social relationship type: intimate, personal,
social, and public. He suggested that interpersonal
distance helps to regulate intimacy by control-
ling sensory exposures, because the possibility
of sensory stimulation (smells, sights, touch) is
enhanced at closer distances. Hall suggested that in
the United States, intimate distances are less than
18 in. (45.72 cm), personal distances range from 18
in. (45.72 cm) to 4 ft (1.2 m), social distances range
from 4 ft (1.2 m) to 12 ft (3.66 m), and pubic dis-
tances are greater than 12 ft (3.66 m).
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
This meaning and function of space is a universal
aspect of life that exists across cultures. Thus, cul-
tures must regulate the use of space, as such regula-
tion is necessary for social coordination; violations
of space bring about aversive reactions (Sussman &
Rosenfeld, 1978). People of all cultures appear to
use space according to these four distinctions, but
they differ in the size of the spaces they attribute to
them. A study of people from five different cultures
(American, Swedish, Greek, Southern Italian, and
Scottish), for example, showed that the cultures
were similar in the order of the distances for differ-
ent types of transactions but that there were signifi-
cant mean differences in the actual distances used
(Little, 1968). Cultures around the Mediterranean,
Middle East, or of Latin origin interact at closer dis-
tances. Arab males tend to sit closer to each other
than American males, with more direct, confronta-
tional types of body orientations (Watson & Graves,
1966). They also use greater eye contact and speak
in louder voices. Arabs, at least in the past, learned
to interact with others at distances close enough to
feel the other person’s breath (Hall, 1963, 1966).
Latin Americans tend to interact more closely than
do individuals of European backgrounds (Forston &
Larson, 1968), and Indonesians tend to sit closer
than Australians (Noesjirwan, 1977, 1978). Italians
interact more closely than either Germans or Ameri-
cans, and Colombians interact at closer distances
than do Costa Ricans (Shuter, 1976). When interact-
ing with someone from their same culture, Japanese
sat the farthest away, Venezuelans the closest, with
Americans somewhere in the middle (Sussman &
Rosenfeld, 1982). Interestingly, in the same study,
when the nonnative English speakers spoke in
English, they adopted the American conversational
distance compared to when speaking with others
from their home country in their native language.
Cultural differences in the use of space even occur
when individuals set dolls to interact with each
other (Little, 1968).
In addition to cultural norms, another major
factor determining the amount of space used in
interpersonal interactions is the relationship of the
interactants; the specific content or affective tone
of the interaction is also important (Little, 1968).
Furthermore, much of the information we have
93
Matsumoto and Hwang
about the use of interpersonal space involves dyadic
interaction. We have much less research informa-
tion about the use of space among groups of people,
especially strangers, across cultures.
Cultures also regulate touch. The meaning and
function of touch is likely similar across cultures.
Cultures differ in the amounts of touching behavior
deemed acceptable, which facilitates social coor-
dination. As mentioned earlier, Watson (1970)
classified 30 countries as either a contact culture
or a noncontact culture. Violations of the cultural
rules regarding touch are likely to be interpreted in
the same way as those of space, producing aversive
consequences.
Cultural Norms for Whole Body
Movements
As discussed in Chapter 15 of this handbook,
postures communicate attitudinal states and general
affect, as opposed to the specific emotions commu-
nicated by face and voice. There is surprisingly little
cross-cultural research on the production or inter-
pretation of the meaning of postures across cultures.
The studies that do exist suggest that people of
different cultures interpret postures according
to the same dimensions (i.e., positivity, status),
but they place different weights of importance on
specific aspects of these dimensions (Kudoh &
Matsumoto, 1985; Matsumoto & Kudoh, 1987). One
recent study examined whole body, triumphant dis-
plays of dominance that were produced by
Olympic athletes after winning in agonistic encoun-
ters (Hwang & Matsumoto, 2014). Although all
athletes produced some degree of these whole body
expressive behaviors when they won their final
matches, cultures moderated the amount of these
behaviors produced. Athletes from status-oriented
cultures tended to produce more of these whole body
dominance behaviors than did athletes from more
egalitarian cultures. Presumably status-oriented cul-
tures facilitate the expression of nonverbal behaviors
related to dominance more than will egalitarian
cultures, apropos of the norms regarding social inter-
action and social coordination in these cultures.
Gait refers to the pattern of movement of the
body when walking. A handful of studies have
examined cross-cultural differences in gait and
94
perceptions of it. Montepare and Zebrowitz (1993)
obtained judgments from Korean observers of 5- to
70-year-old Americans as they walked from one end
of a room to the other and back, and they compared
those judgments to those previously obtained from
American observers (Montepare & Zebrowitz-
McArthur, 1988). There was cross-cultural agree-
ment in perceptions of age, sex, strength, and hap-
piness, but there were cross-cultural differences on
perceptions of dominance. The authors suggested
that some reactions to gait information may be
universal, whereas other reactions may be more
influenced by culture.
There has also been some interesting research
in the speed with which individuals across cultures
typically move through their cities (Kirkcaldy,
Furnham, & Levine, 2001; Levine & Bartlett, 1984;
Levine, Lynch, Miyake, & Lucia, 1989; Levine &
Norenzayan, 1999). These studies have demon-
strated that pace is associated with punctuality,
coronary heart disease, and a variety of attitudinal
and personality traits. Such cultural differences open
the door to future studies examining how these
differences facilitate social coordination differently
in different cultures.
CONCLUSION: THE IMPLICATION OF THE
CULTURAL REGULATION OF NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION TO INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
Cultures facilitate different context-specific norms
related to nonverbal communication and nonverbal
behaviors because they facilitate social coordina-
tion and reduce the potential for social chaos, all
of which enhance the possibility of the increased
social sharing of intentions. These functions help
groups to be efficient and, in turn, aid ultimately in
survival. Cultural differences in nonverbal commu-
nication, therefore, make sense when viewed from
the perspective of the culture in which the behaviors
are produced.
Cultural differences in nonverbal communica-
tion, however, are often difficult to experience
and to interpret in intercultural interactions, espe-
cially because nonverbal behaviors are the “silent
language” (Henley, 1977), and many people in

intercultural interactions focus on the words being
spoken and not the nonverbal behavior. Intercul-
tural communication is more likely to be marred by
uncertainty and ambiguity (Gudykunst & Nishida,
1984; Gudykunst, Yang, & Nishida, 1985; Hogg,
Sherman, Dierselhuis, Maitner, & Moffitt, 2007),
not only because of questions concerning the verbal
messages but also because of cultural differences in
the nonverbal messages that co-occur. These differ-
ences often lead to aversive reactions that increase
the potential for misunderstanding, miscommunica-
tion, and misattributions about intent or character,
which disrupts social coordination and increases
the potential for conflict. It is easier for people from
expressive cultures to judge those from reserved
cultures as being untrustworthy, inscrutable, sly,
deceptive, or shifty. At the same time, it is easier
for people from reserved cultures to judge those
from expressive cultures as arrogant, loud, rude,
immature, or vulgar. These negative reactions occur
unconsciously and automatically because they are
rooted in cultural filters for interpreting the appro-
priateness of behavior that are developed early on
through the process of enculturation within one’s
culture.
Many of these interpretations and attributions,
however, may be misguided because the cultural
filters with which one uses to interpret the non-
verbal communications of others may not be the
cultural framework within which the person’s
behavior is rooted. One of the goals of intercultural
interactions is to reduce the uncertainty inherent
in the situation (Gudykunst, Nishida, & Chua,
1986; Gudykunst et al., 1985). One way to do this
is to realize that cultural differences in nonverbal
communications exist, that those differences exist
for a reason that makes sense either now or in the
past for that culture in which those behaviors are
imbedded, that engaging with such differences may
produce negative emotional reactions, and that
these differences and reactions are a normal and
inevitable part of the communication process. By
creating these kinds of expectations, we can begin
to ensure that intercultural interactions are not an
obstacle but instead are a platform for staging the
development and exchange of ideas and the sharing
of goals in new and exciting ways not actualized by
The Cultural Bases of Nonverbal Communication
intracultural communication. Understanding the
cultural bases of nonverbal communication is an
essential aid in our efforts to do so in today’s multi-
cultural, pluralistic world.
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