Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Week 7 D1- Principles




There are eight principles of nonverbal communication.  One of the principles is, “cultural norms and expectations guide our interpretation”. This means that the way people respond to age, time, class, race, gender, ethnicity, etc., varies in a group setting. An example of this would be age-based and a person of one culture might think it would be fair for the oldest person to take the leader role, and someone of another culture might think it would be the person who puts in the most effort to be the leader. Another principle is, “research suggests that women and men differently decode nonverbal cues”.  This means that men and women differ in the way they decode messages.  For example in a group, a man from one culture might take a women bringing cookies to a meeting as flirtatious, where  a woman from another culture would see it as just a snack. There are other principles and they are all important.

2 comments:

  1. Hey there! I like the principles that you have picked out to talk about. It was a good example you put out for cultural norms. I can totally see how because of this norm things are picked or decided. When I was young I saw this happen, in my culture it was norm for the oldest person to always be the leader at whatever we are doing because they are older and wiser. For the second principle, I can totally see how men and women decode nonverbal messages differently. I mean I can even see how this can happen between a men and women of the same culture because they are genetically different. Anyways good post this week!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Roro, I thought you did a great job with your response this week. I thought your example of the “cultural norms and expectations guide our interpretation” example was really good. I can understand that because in the Armenian culture we have some cultural norms that are different from my American cultural norms. I was raised with both so I can understand both sides of differences. I also thought your example of gender decoding messages was interesting. I have a coworker who does this at work. She will bake cookies or snacks and bring them for people at work. It is just a gesture of being a friendly coworker but sometimes new employees interpret it a different way.

    ReplyDelete