Verbal and Nonverbal Communication – Self-Presentation and Interacting With Others (PSY,SOC)

00:00 Okay, let’s get into the differences between verbal and non-verbal.

00:04 And I think again, these are fairly self-explanatory.

00:07 Verbal refers to you communicating talking and non-verbal is essentially anything else.

00:12 and that include things like gestures. So like I’m doing right now with my hands, body language how somebody standing. What is their stance? how are they presenting themselves. Are they kind of down low? Are they feeling very very loud and proud? And just by looking at somebody you can tell “Wow, you look pretty tired today.” Well, how can you tell? “Well you’re leaning on your chair and you’re sitting there like this” versus When you’re standing like this, you’re like is everything okay? You seem very alert, very very full of energy that’s are you’re ready to fight what’s going on? What does this mean to you right now? I’m ready to go? Let’s fight.

00:43 I haven’t said anything. And that’s the universal sign for you’re looking at my girlfriend, let’s go versus I’m really tired. I don’t think I want to fight you today.

00:53 And there's this thing like eye contact, right? So if I’m looking you directly in the eye, it doesn’t necessarily mean, I’m confronting you but that means that I’m engaged. I’m here right now, and I’m talking to you.

01:03 Versus nowadays a lot of times, what do you see? you see this.

01:06 And I’ll be with you in just a second. I’m just going to finish sending this message, right.

01:09 You a lot of times you don’t get that eye contact.

01:11 and so eye contact is very very important because just the eyes and itself will tell you so much information just the way body language alone will tell you a lot, just the way gestures will tell you a lot .

01:21 and probably as humans one of the most important and I would say dramatic piece of non-verbal communication is the face.

01:31 The face can tell you so much and the facial expressions.

01:33 And I think we’ve all been in a situation where you’re loved one is giving you the eye or the face.

01:39 and you know right away without them saying anything exactly what they mean like let’s go and you can see that, like look or just across the room… doesn’t happen so often. But your loved ones gives the eye like I love you so much as supposed to I want to kill you right now.

01:54 Look, just by the looks alone you get a lot.

01:57 Now, verbal communication is really unique.

02:00 and I think this one there's less interpretation required because it’s pretty implicit when somebody is yelling at you.

02:08 You know that they are fairly angry and you can get that.

02:11 And if somebody is whimpering and crying a little bit. You know that they are upset.

02:14 So there is -- it’s fairly straightforward. There's a lot less to interpret but nevertheless it’s still quite important than that very different features of sound like pitch, volume, rate can really influence what’s being said.

02:29 So let’s say for example, if I say “Shut up!!” Well, what does that imply versus “shut up!” versus “shuut uup” Those are -- it’s the same word. I've said it in three different ways.

02:40 Each meaning, three completely different things, right? So I haven’t actually change the word that I’m saying but the perceived definition of each is completely different.

02:51 Now, a new thing in the last few years has been our google, or smartphones, or IPhones, texting and all of a sudden now in this written communication. And those tweets that we put out the texts that we have going out. The SMS’s, emails.

03:08 There's so many different things that we do via written communication that supposed to be imparting our emotion.

03:15 So LOL which means laugh out loud or emoticons or OMG.

03:20 All these things that are highly annoying but are meant to impart.

03:24 “Hey, I love that joke you said and I’m laughing out loud” or “Oh my God, I can't believe that we’re going to the Justin Bieber concert tonight.” or so on and so on. So depending on what you say in your written communication which is how I would say the young and growing population now are communicating more prominently then any of the others.

03:43 It can become very very important.

03:47 Now, we’re going to kind of end this last little section on something which seems maybe a little bit odd and out of place.

03:54 And that’s Animals Signals, and how they communicate.

03:56 and I think the reason that were even approach in this topic is simply because animals -- we tend to be very egocentric were humans are all about us.

04:06 and this is about human communicating why we even talk about animals.

04:09 We got to remember we belong to this larger community of everything on this planet.

04:13 And animals are actually very very effective in communicating.

04:16 in a lot of ways almost better than humans, right? So it’s always kind of nice to compare notes and say what are they doing? And how does that actually relate in? Are we doing things that are analogous? Or similar to that.

04:26 They use a wider way of techniques and signals to communicate with their environment.

04:34 And the people around them.

04:35 Things like colorings. We know that bright colors can indicate to saying a predator, “Hey, I don’t want to eat that really bright butterfly 'cause those bright ones actually might kill me.

04:48 And I know that because it happened to my uncle. My uncle wants to eat a butterfly.

04:54 and I’m pretending to be a tiger right now or a kangaroo or something that eats butterflies.” And it’s talking to his kangaroo buddies saying, “Oh yeah, I had a grandfather who wants to eat those orange butterflies or yellow butterfly and died.

05:05 so stay away from those.” Again, there is no verbal communication there other than between the two kangaroos, who now speak all of a sudden. But they are noticing this color.

05:15 and they’re able to detect some information from that.

05:17 Animals also do change their colors and coats based on season, based on mating status.

05:23 If I’m ready to mate all of a sudden I’m going to change my colors into a bright red.

05:30 I think we all were sometimes maybe the opposite sex will do that for us humans.

05:34 So we don’t have to guess but again coloring can be really really informative.

05:39 Sounds can be manipulated for various applications.

05:42 So it just scares off predators to express pain or fear or again back to mating. So really really useful.

05:51 Chemical, now we mentioned this in another module we talked about pheromones.

05:55 And have pheromones in humans can indicate attraction, can indicate fear.

06:01 And so you see this in animals as well.

06:04 So originates probably from them more so than us. Then use them more so than us.

06:08 but to indicate threat, the presence that they are here.

06:11 They’re going to let off their scent to communicate with others, to indicate mating.

06:16 And then there's touch and movement which again is in non-verbal.

06:19 And here we’re talking about how certain animals have specific patterns like bees and butterflies will do this different dances or moves to indicate and to communicate with others about what they’re trying to do or express.

06:31 So we went through a whole bunch of different ways to express emotion.

06:36 we talk about gender, culture. At the end of the day it’s all about communicating and expressing your emotion.