Nonverbal Communication in Everyday Life
SAGE Journal Articles
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In text Find Out more boxes provide a brief, easy-to-read synopsis of a recently published SAGE Journal Article studies and research. For further research and exploration, each journal article is reprinted in full, below.
Research 10.1
Abstract: Emotional expression plays an important role in our social lives. This is especially true for leaders, who hold greater power as compared with their followers. Based on the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model, we explore the effectiveness of leaders’ negative emotional expression on follower performance by examining the moderating effects of follower conscientiousness, agreeableness, power distance orientation and perceived leader power. We collected data from 40 firms across various industry types using a multisource, multiphase research design. The data are comprised of 191 leader−follower dyads, consisting of 86 leaders and 191 followers. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis show that followers’ conscientiousness and agreeableness positively moderate the relationship between leader negative emotional expression and follower performance. However, when followers are low in power distance orientation and perceived leader power, the relationship between leader negative emotional expression and follower performance becomes negative. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.
Research 10.2
Abstract: Extending evidence that nonverbal complementary behavior can occur in dyads to the intergroup domain, the authors predicted that women assume a relatively submissive (narrow) posture when confronted with a male instructor adopting a dominant (broad) posture, but only when he smiles (affiliation motive) and when gender is salient. Male affiliation (smiling vs. not smiling) and gender salience were manipulated in Study 1 by focusing on sex differences (vs. individual differences) in presentation style, strengthened by the instructor making a sexist remark. As predicted, women adopted a more submissive posture when gender was salient and the male instructor smiled. In Study 2, male posture was manipulated (dominant vs. submissive) to examine postural complementarity in women. Study 3 replicated the postural effect, especially when the sexist remark is present. This effect was mediated by the instructor’s perceived warmth. Implications for gender, benevolent sexism, and intergroup power relations are discussed.
Research 10.3
Abstract: Previous studies of organizational decision making demonstrate an abundance of positive biases directed toward highly attractive individuals. The current research, in contrast, suggests that when the person being evaluated is of the same sex as the evaluator, attractiveness hurts, rather than helps. Three experiments assessing evaluations of potential job candidates (Studies 1 and 3) and university applicants (Study 2) demonstrated positive biases toward highly attractive other-sex targets but negative biases toward highly attractive same-sex targets. This pattern was mediated by variability in participants’ desire to interact with versus avoid the target individual (Studies 1 and 2) and was moderated by participants’ level of self-esteem (Study 3); the derogation of attractive same-sex targets was not observed among people with high self-esteem. Findings demonstrate an important exception to the positive effects of attractiveness in organizational settings and suggest that negative responses to attractive same-sex targets stem from perceptions of self-threat.
Research 10.4
Abstract: Individuals who identify with punk subculture negotiate between aesthetic expression of their subcultural identity and the role they believe they are expected to play at work. Men and women, aged 26 - 45 years, in a wide range of professions were interviewed and asked questions related to their workplace dress. They were asked to bring to the interview a display of how they dress to express both their punk and workplace identities. Interviewees reported a balancing act of blending in and standing out, taking into consideration viewer interpretations and subsequent outcomes. Efforts to wear ‘‘appropriate’’ dress included accommodations such as modifying one’s punk appearance by conceding to dress codes and using perceived non-confrontational aesthetic choices with punk cues subtly coded to appear conventional. Dress features were selectively revealing or concealing punk symbols as interviewees strive to push the boundaries of workplace appropriateness for satisfying aesthetic self-expression.
Research 10.5
Abstract: Although salespeople have long been urged to recognize and adapt to customer needs and wants by observing communications style and other cues or signals by the buyer, nonverbal communications by the salesperson have received much less empirical scrutiny. However, nonverbal communications may be important in this context; research in several disciplines intimates that nonverbal signals are equally, perhaps more, important than verbal signals in persuasive communications. In a first study, the authors examined the National Collegiate Sales Contest (NCSC) scoring system in a classroom setting, and on finding a distinct nonverbal contribution to total sales presentation variance, they concluded that appropriate nonverbal signals should receive more weighting in the NCSC scoring system. The authors then reviewed the extant literature for a multiitem measure of nonverbal sales behaviors; finding none, they developed a measure of nonverbal sales behavior in role-play presentations in a second study. The article empirically demonstrates the importance of nonverbal signals in student sales presentations for personal selling instructors and practitioners and describes how specific nonverbal signals may apply differentially to aspects of sales presentations.