Research Topic: Sadie M.

For this research assignment I have chosen to write about nonverbal communication. The topic interests me because I find anything do with human social behavior very fascinating. I’ve also found that there are a multitude of scholarly sources on the subject which will be useful in writing the paper. Some questions guiding my research will be: What is nonverbal communication? In what social settings is it most prevalent and how does it differ between them? Is nonverbal communication different in men and women? Do animals communicate nonverbally? How so? Do conditions such as autism and Down syndrome affect a person’s ability to understand nonverbal communication? How does the type of nonverbal communication differ when attraction is involved between different sex and same sex situations? Is nonverbal communication necessary? How has nonverbal communication changed with advancing technology and other means of communication such as phone calls, texting and email? How does nonverbal communication differ among different cultures? My thesis (for now, at least) will focus on the fact that nonverbal communication exists throughout all cultures and that is an important factor in the way humans communicate. There are many articles and books old and new written solely about the psychology surrounding nonverbal communication. Some books that I’m considering using are: Bodily Communication by M. Argyle, Defining the social deficits of autism from the Journal of Child Medicine, Nonverbal Dialects and Accents in Facial Expressions of Emotion by Hillary Anger Elfenbein. As humans that are constantly communicating with the people around us, I think it’s extremely important to study and understand the role that nonverbal communication plays in our lives. Because we learn many of our nonverbal cues at such a young age, we might be communicating in certain ways without even realizing it! I think it’s fascinating that we can learn to both improve our strategies of communication to help us with things like speeches, presentations or maybe even something like flirting while also learning to more effectively read the nonverbal cues of the people around us.