Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: communication

[Michael D (ohanamd]

> Michael, still insisting that nonverbals account for 93% of all
> communication, wrote:

This isn't what I said.  In fact, you followed this by quoting what I did
say:

> >However, even if the statistics are inaccurate, the principle is still
> true.
> >As I said, "I love you" can mean many different things, as can most
words.

> Most people believe that they can detect falsehood through nonverbal
> communication.  One experiment after another has demonstrated that this
> belief is erroneous.

This isn't what I said, either.

> "Hand me them pliers,
> willya?" is not emotion-laden (OK, if you want to invent exotic situations
> where it would be, I acknowledge the possibility) and the world would be a
> ridiculous place if the next worker on the assembly line came back with
> "Your nonverbals tell me you really don't want the pliers".

However, the worker could be saying, "I'm grateful for your assistance" or
"I'm frustrated with my attempts to do this without them" or "I hate having
to work with you" or "Please give me some help for a change" or any of a
variety of other things, depending on the non-verbals.

And the reality is that people DO react to the nonverbal messages whether
they consciously think about them or not.  People think they know what the
person "really" meant.  I see that a lot in e-mail groups, as well as in
person.  For example, I've seen people accuse others of being angry when the
intention was something entirely different because they read the e-mail
message and imagined the person's nonverbals (actually, projected them).

And in in-person communication, my observation is that the nonverbals often
do, in fact, communicate more than the words do.  That would be less true if
everyone communicated absolutely clearly and directly, including the subtle
messages, but that is very rare.

By the way, I think this topic is very relevant to cohousing, or to any
attempt at community.  It isn't without meaning that community and
communication come from the same root word.

Namaste,
Michael



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