Reading Nonverbals

By Meredith Hafer

You see a frowning face and you automatically know that person is not happy. Reading their nonverbals can be easy to detect what that person means without actually speaking it. However, what if you are not face-to-face with them? How do you read someone’s nonverbals online? Have no fear; Andrew Ledbetter and Kiley Larson (2008) have studied the nonverbal cues in emails that will benefit anyone entering corporate America today. In the two empirical studies conducted by Ledbetter and Larson (2008), they tested the association between sending nonverbals in an email, support satisfaction, and communicator sex.

Communicating online is very different than face-to-face interaction. People must interpret what emotion you are trying to convey just from the email (Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). Therefore, communicators must try to compensate for the personal absence by adding in their own nonverbal cues(Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). You can get creative when you are designing a nonverbal online, or you can keep it simple. Some examples of creating your personalized nonverbal online is the making of a human face with symbols from the computer (Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). Since more people are using online to communicate and creating their own nonverbal cues, it is important to understand the receiver’s support satisfaction from the text. It is also crucial to understand if the sender’s sex has an influence on how frequently they use emotional nonverbals. Ledbetter and Larson found that nonverbal cue usage online interaction does not provide support satisfaction to the receiver (2008). Translating this for use, means you can add nonverbal cues to your text, and it will not alter the receiver’s emotions of support. So send as little or as much nonverbal cues as you want, and you will not influence the evaluation of supportive email messages (Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). Learning the difference between which gender sends more emotional nonverbal will help you communicate more effectively. As many of you would assume, the results showed that women send emotionally expressive nonverbal cues than men(Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). So the next email you receive from a female, you should count how many times they use emotional nonverbal cues. You will see the results that Ledbetter and Larson proved.

Next time you want to send an email to a colleague pay more attention to the content of the message than the nonverbal. You will get more of a satisfactory response from the receiver with your verbals than your nonverbal (Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). Finally if you are a woman communicating, watch your usage of emotionally expressive nonverbals(Ledbetter & Larson, 2008). They will not help you when communicating online. Save yourself the hassle, and just stick to the nonverbals in person, and the verbals online.

Ledbetter, A. M., & Larson, K. A. (2008). NONVERBAL CUES IN E-MAIL SUPPORTIVE COMMUNICATION. Information, Communication & Society, 11(8), 1089-1110. doi:10.1080/13691180802109022

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