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  • Essay / An experiment on the factors that influence nonverbal communication

    Nonverbal communication can be used voluntarily or involuntarily. Some of the most common ways to use nonverbal communication are posture, tone of voice, facial expression, volume, etc., and it is something that we use daily whether we are conscious or not. Many types of nonverbal communication allow us to analyze a certain situation, a person's mood or atmosphere. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Society has taken certain non-verbal communication measures and set social norms that a community must follow; however, my experiences in challenging these social norms have been quite the opposite of society's comfort zone. Human touch can easily be misinterpreted, so I decided to break some of these haptic rules. The standard rule for touch is pretty obvious; If you've just met, a handshake is probably the only acceptable thing. If you've been friends for a while, hugging and touching seem to come easy, and if you're dating another person, physical contact is nothing out of the ordinary. I started by taking the safe route and trying it on my boyfriend first. . We had a casual chat on the way back to our rooms, and as we headed off towards Camden East and West, I gave him a hug. I didn't really expect anything different since we are used to physical contact, so this was the reaction I would normally expect. He just smiled and we said goodbye. This is a typical reaction that I would expect from someone I'm already very close to, so this action didn't strike me as unusual or uncomfortable at all. The second person I decided to try this on was one of my close friends. We were having a normal conversation and I lightly brushed his arm in the middle of the conversation. That's when I knew this wasn't a society-approved action, because she stopped talking and gave me a strange look as if to say, "What the hell?" what are you doing? This is not normally how I would interact with any of my friends, so even initiating this act was rather uncomfortable for both me and her. After touching his arm, I started to smile because I knew that what I had just done was very clumsy in nature and seemed obviously out of place. Finally, I tried my last haptic experiment on a stranger. For this part of the experiment, I was really nervous to see the results. I'm not a physical person, so I knew from the start that my approach was going to be very tricky. It took me a while to find a stranger with whom I would feel comfortable enough to use this method casually, so I only ended up using it towards the end of the day. I finally decided to violate my social norm in the athletic training room, because I had many opportunities to break this rule. I had struck up a casual conversation with an athlete about his injury and as soon as I had the chance, I put my hand on his arm. His face was a little hard to read, but I think he just played it like I was naturally a touchy person, which I knew was obviously not true. Immediately afterward, the conversation seemed to get shorter and shorter, and eventually we ran out of things to say, so I ended up going on with my day. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a now.