Nonverbal Communication

I watched a Cantonese show on television called "The Gateau Affairs." The description said it contains romance and drama. Watching the show without listening to the sound would not be much of a problem because I do not understand the language although I would be able to take cues from their tones. I turned off the sound and subtitles. I initially had a problem figuring out the relationships as the workplace environment that it was set up to be did not facilitate for personal contact. However, as the episode progressed, I could distinguish that the young woman and the more mature bakery chef had a more loving relationship as he gave her roses, briefly held her hand, and looked at her in admiration; the sentiment which she returned through emotional glances. The context of why it was not a blossoming romance could not be determined without sound or subtitles and added further confusion when certain scenes had employee members getting into fights, thus showing strained relationships that I did not know the reason for. Exaggerated emotions, such as anger and excitement were easy to detect due to the physical appearances where facial expressions would show furrowed brows or tears (Krauss, Chen, & Chawla, n.d.).

Watching the same episode again, now with the sound and subtitles turned on, I could understand the sequence of events and the anticipation of emotions. I made the assumption that one particular character was a thug because of his appearance and mannerisms (fighting with others) but, knowing the context, he was standing up for another individual that had been offended and hurt. Therefore, the entire character's identity then changed. Following a show that I know well, established relationships would already be known to me and I would be able to anticipate emotions and certain events with established character identity from previous episodes.

Doing this particular exercise has taught me that we can make prejudiced assumptions based on appearances and actions that, by knowing an individual well, would differ from initial presumptions.

Resources
Krauss, R., Chen, Y., & Chawla, P. (n.d.). Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication: What do conversational hand gestures tell us? Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Retrieved from http://dennismeredith.com/files/documents/Hand_gestures.pdf