Week 7 Question 1

Since nonverbal messages don’t involve any verbal messages, it can be ambiguous. When my father was listening to my sister’s explanation about her recent attitude problems, he had his arms crossed, lean back on the chair and with a serious look on his face. I though he was angry with my sister’s explanation and was about to burst up right after. As I was watching on the side I got really nervous and I interrupted my sister. I turned to my dad, and I asked him not to be angry with my sister because it wasn’t that big of a deal. He replied that he wasn’t mad at all and he was just listening to my sister. Later I asked him what was up with all the serious gestures. He said he lean back because my sister was out of focus in his eyes (he has eyesight problem) and his serious look was because he couldn’t hear my sister loud enough (my dad couldn’t hear in one ear). It was funny how I forgot all of my dad’s physical problems under the situation and I misinterpreted all of his nonverbal messages. A lot of nonverbal messages are unintentional and there are a lot of aspects we should consider when we are interpreting them. As it was mention in the text, “…Check the context…Compare current behavior to baseline behavior…Ask for verbal feedback” (Trenholm, 2008, p. 109). As for me, I did “ask for verbal feedback” to increase my accuracy because I think it is the easier way. However, this method couldn’t use on any situation.