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Nonverbal Communication During a Global Pandemic

How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we interact with one another? Does mask wearing alter the way we communicate?

Humintell Director Dr. David Matsumoto has recently been interviewed for a number of publications regarding nonverbal communication during a global pandemic.

Please see below for the most recent news articles, podcasts and interviews!

8/23/2020

(Radio Health Journal) Reading Our Masked Faces

PODCAST: With faces hidden behind masks for COVID-19, we are losing some of the visual information we depend on for smooth communication. Experts discuss the awkward encounters and specific looks we’re likely to misinterpret when we can’t see other people’s mouths.

 

8/14/2020

(National Geographic) How Facial Expressions Help Robots Communicate with Us

VIDEO: A wrinkled nose, raised eyebrows, a frowning mouth—all can say a lot without uttering a single word. Facial expressions are the closest thing humans have to a universal language, and it could change our relationship with androids and other human-like robots.

8/14/2020

(Wall Street Journal) How to smize (smile with your eyes) when you’re wearing a mask

ARTICLE: Service employees in the Covid era practice a modeling move coined by Tyra Banks to show customers a happy face

8/14/2020

(Inverse) Three Tips to Communicate Clearly Behind a Mask

ARTICLE: Although there was some initial confusion, one thing has become clear six months into the Covid-19 pandemic: wearing masks helps limit viral transmission.

 

8/8/2020

(Inverse) How to be “Crystal Clear” over Zoom, Slack, and remote communication tools

ARTICLE: Before 2020, working from home was a rare perk for most people. But now, remote work has become the norm for two out of three American workers.

8/2/2020

(Philadelphia Inquirer) What’s the fate of hugs, handshakes, and high-fives in a post-pandemic world?

ARTICLE: Experts and on-the-ground greeters like Sylvester and Weinstein aren’t sure what the future of hugs, handshakes, and high-fives will be in a post-coronavirus world, but one thing is certain: It’s going to get awkward before it gets better.

6/25/2020

(KCBS Radio) Wave and a Nod: Smiling with a mask on proves challenging.

INTERVIEW: When we communicate with each other, the face has a lot to do with it – smiles, frowns and other forms of expression with the mouth. Now that we’re all wearing face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we’re trying to find new ways to get our emotions across.

6/23/2020

(NY Times) Masks keep us safe. They also hide our smiles.

ARTICLE: Face coverings may be here for a while. How can we adapt to a world where facial expressions are invisible?

6/10/2020

(CNN) Coronavirus has stolen our most meaningful ways to connect

ARTICLE: Before emojis, before writing, before speech, there was non-verbal communication; body language, touch and use of physical space. Of all ways we communicate, the roots of non-verbal communication run the deepest. To show it and to know it is part of being a human.

5/22/2020

(Atlantic) We’ll Be Wearing Things on Our Faces for a Long Time

ARTICLE: You can choose between a mask and a face shield, but you can’t choose nothing.

5/21/2020

(Medium) I See You but I Don’t: How Masks Alter Human Connection

ARTICLE: They can disrupt our ability to communicate and connect. But there are ways to overcome a mask’s necessary downsides.

Dr. Matsumoto Podcast Interview Part 2

Last week, we began discussing Dr. David Matsumoto’s podcast interview, but we weren’t able to get to all of it. So, now time to discuss the second half!

This time around, Dr. Matsumoto expounded on topics including the connection between deception and microexpressions, the role of gestures in communication, education, and artificial intelligence.

One of the important uses of microexpressions is their role in deception detection and lying. Even when somebody is trying to mask their true emotion, signs of it will “leak out” before they are able to sport the smile or passive expression that would hide their feelings. This is even more likely when that underlying emotion is particularly intense.

These “leaks” don’t necessarily prove truth or deception, but they may show that the emotion being expressed is not the expression being experienced. This can be the case for their gestures, body language, or facial expression.

Dr. Matsumoto connects this idea to the use of microexpressions. It is these ultra-quick expressions that get produced, but they are very hard to notice. Even people who notice a strange expression struggle at interpreting it. That is why most of the research involves video taping people and looking at the tapes frame by frame.

After this discussion, the interviewer sought to understand how different behaviors translate to their underling emotion.

While this is a big question, Dr. Matsumoto started by discussing different kinds of gestures. For example, certain types of hand waving exist to “animate speech.” These do not have inherent meaning, but this is still important in conveying excitement or word emphasis. Other gestures, called “emblems” can have specific verbal messages and include the “thumbs up,” among many others.

Gestures help with communication, but they also strengthen our own cognition. In experimental settings where hand gestures are constrained, people are shown to struggle at performing certain tasks, such as memory tests or mathematical problems.

Both Dr. Matsumoto and the interviewer emphasized the role of nonverbal communication in education. Clearly, an educational context is shaped by environmental factors, the behavior of the professor, and the way that professor conveys information.

Because these environmental factors determine a lot about a communicative context, as we discussed last week, Dr. Matsumoto emphasized the need for teachers to arrange classrooms as they saw necessary to determine certain sorts of educational engagement.

Similarly, while society emphasizes “what to say,” it often does not focus on how teachers should say things. Even if we praise (or chastise) a student, it is very important how this is done, in terms of the gestures and nonverbal behaviors conveyed by the teacher.

Finally, the interview ended with a discussion of artificial intelligence and how machines can be made to communicate effectively. Dr. Matsumoto stressed the need for machines to resemble humans but suggested that there was still uncertainty over exactly how human the robot looked.

Dr. Matsumoto Podcast Interview

Communication may be much vaster than we thought.

In a new podcast, Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto helps explain the non-verbal world of communication to wider audiences. He emphasizes that non-verbal communication is anything that does not include verbal language, but the varieties of non-verbal communication are almost endless.

One of these is based in the environment. What is the lighting of the conversation? Is music playing or is there a specific sound? This helps communicate something. Similarly, our personal characteristics, such as how we dress, convey something revealing about our personality, without us even opening our mouths.

Dr. Matsumoto also describes “behavioral traces.” Even when we are not in the room, certain aspects of our personality can be conveyed. For instance, if somebody were to enter your house without your presence, they would see how you have laid out your room. They would see what you put on the walls. Each of these things communicates something to that person.

While these forms of communication are not Humintell or Dr. Matsumoto’s focus, they help show how many things we can use to understand people and how vast the potential for communication without words is.

Of particular focus, however, are non-verbal behavior which includes the microexpressions, body language, and other slight activities that we engage in. While words are incredibly powerful, they must inevitably exist within a context of non-verbal behavior, and non-verbal communication more broadly.

In fact, when verbal messages contradict non-verbal messages, most of the information we garner from the conversation come from the non-verbal messages. Even though we are often bad at reading these forms of communication, there is still some instinctive receptivity, according to Dr. Matsumoto.

After discussing non-verbal messages, the conversation shifted to whether expressions are universal, which is of course a major topic of this blog.

Dr. Matsumoto emphasized the biological research showing the presence of expressions, emotions, and behaviors across cultures. This tendency is innate in us from the level of infancy, but it is also quickly modulated and influenced by the culture that we are in. Our cultures helps shape what we would feel emotional about, for instance.

When asked about the impact of globalization and cultural homogenization, Dr. Matsumoto pointed out that this is a significant cultural force and that, especially in urban areas, cultures are increasingly merging. However, it remains unclear what impacts this will have on cultural expression and serves as a potentially fascinating place for future research.

The only preliminary research about homogenization in communication has come at the level of gestures. Traditionally, gestures have been thought to be incredibly specific to cultures, but Dr. Matsumoto’s work has found that people are able to recognize certain gestures, like “thumbs up”, no matter what culture they have come from.

Please stay tuned for a blog on the rest of this fascinating podcast! And let us know what you think about these exciting ideas.