Four Misconceptions About Nonverbal Communication

Research and theory in nonverbal communication have made great advances toward understanding the patterns and functions of nonverbal behavior in social settings. Progress has been hindered, we argue, by presumptions about nonverbal behavior that follow from both received wisdom and faulty evidence. In this article, we document four persistent misconceptions about nonverbal communication—namely, that people communicate using decodable body language; that they have a stable personal space by which they regulate contact with others; that they express emotion using universal, evolved, iconic, categorical facial expressions; and that they can deceive and detect deception, using dependable telltale clues. We show how these misconceptions permeate research as well as the practices of popular behavior experts, with consequences that extend from intimate relationships to the boardroom and courtroom and even to the arena of international security. Notwithstanding these misconceptions, existing frameworks of nonverbal communication are being challenged by more comprehensive systems approaches and by virtual technologies that ambiguate the roles and identities of interactants and the contexts of interaction.