PART 1:
I started this assignment by explaining to my mother and my sister what I was going to to do, so they didn't think I was insane. Then I set a timer and told them to act and speak normally. They began speaking about my sisters performance over this last weekend. I added a few notes non-verbally, and it proved to be a little of a challenge, but when the discussion turned on my a my recent college acceptance, it became a lot more difficult. I had to answer my mom's questions with almost like a game of charades. One message that I got my family to understand, shockingly, was "I want to study at the library tomorrow for the AP test with my friend Sarah." Eventually I got used to not speaking and finished up the 15 minutes with no problems. My mom and sister spoke to me like they always did, the one change in communication was them having to decipher what I was saying.
My mother was in charge of the conversation most of the time and initiated most of the conversation changes. I answered all the questions she asked as well as asked some of my own questions through non-verbal body movements. My mom and sister definitely have more power than I did in the conversation.
If the partners represented two different cultures, my mom and sister's nation would have a lot more power over mine because I lacked the ability to relay complex or extensive messages. Even simple messages prove to be tedious and time consuming. My family was definitely frustrated with trying to communicate with me after only 15 minutes, so trying to communicate with an entire community that lacks symbolic language skill, would prove to be very angering and frustrating.
PART 2:
This was extremely difficult for me. My family is extremely hilarious, and I laugh and smile constantly. It was very hard not to smile or laugh in a conversation, especially with my mom. I had to restart the experiment about 15 times. It got to the point were the only way that I could get through it was to keep the communicating to as minimal as possible, while still having an active conversation. They understood me perfectly, but I almost seemed to be a robot.
This experiment taught me a lot about how a good portion of our communicating is through our body language, facial expressions, and vocal fluctuations. You can tell is they are happy, sad, or angry, which can help a lot in a lot of social situations.
This can help us recognize faces in a crowd that may pose a threat to us or the people we care about. We usually pick out angry or sad faces in a group of people before happy faces because of the harm they could cause us because of their emotion.
A few conditions where a person could not be especially keen at reading body language is if they are blind, a psychopath (because the lack the ability to relate to others), or if the have Autism (because they find it difficult to express or understand emotion).
For your first part, that's pretty insane how you got them to understand that you wanted to study at the library. I have no idea how you were able to accomplish that. It was very difficult for me to even have my cousin keep the conversation flowing. I also think it's amazing how you finished the 15 minutes without a problem, we were struggling. I agree with you on the culture part, I also mentioned that the culture with the verbal communication would have have a lot more power. I would personally see them as the leaders and the once with the voice, but who knows. Some cultures could be the complete opposite.
ReplyDeleteGreat work overall.
Hey Kayla,
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting reading your blogpost and I agree that your mom or someone with the speaking ability had the lead and changed the topics in this experiment. They definitely had more power in this experiment because they had language as a major tool. As for the second part I agree that showing no expression makes us monotone and robot-like. Last of all I agree with your last statement that a pyschopath would be better off not reading body language because they could do some serious harm if offended .
Good description of your first experiment, though I'm surprised that you didn't notice a difference in how they communicated to you. Did they ask open-ended questions or did they switch to more "yes/no" questions?
ReplyDeleteGood discussion on the issue of power in the conversation.
I agree with your conclusion on the issue of complex ideas. Can you think of a real life example that mirrors the conditions in this experiment? To find a real life example of this experiment, we need to find a situation where you have a speaking population and another group that doesn't speak that language. We see that in the interaction between English speakers and non-English speaking immigrant populations. Think about how non-English speaking immigrants are treated in Southern California? Are they treated as equals?
Okay on your own experiences in the second experiment, but to be honest, it is the response of your partner(s) that is usually the most interesting part of this experiment. Did you talk to your family about how they felt in this situation? Were they uncomfortable?
I don't disagree with your conclusions regarding the information we receive from body language, but you are only considering the situation where body language matches and supports the information you receive from spoken language. What does it tell you when the body language doesn't match the spoken language? Humans tend to use body language as a type of lie detector. If spoken words don't match with the body language, we are more inclined to believe the body language and doubt the words. Think about how being able to detect liars might help an individual's ability to survive and reproduce (which applies to the next section).
Yes, those who are in the autism spectrum have difficulty reading body language, as do those who are blind, though they can still read vocal intonation. I'll have to think about psychopaths. I suggest they read body language quite well, they just don't respond in a socially acceptable way to that body language.
Missing the example of when it might be best to not read body language? Can body language ever mislead or lie to you?
It seems like you really took this experiment seriously and did the best you could to understand what was going on throughout it. Good job! I can't believe you got them to understand that you wanted to go to the library to study with your friend. I had a really hard time communicating my side of the conversation during my experiment. I experienced the same result as far as who had control of the conversation, and I did it with my mom as well. She ended up just asking me a lot of questions and I did my best to answer them as efficiently as possible.
ReplyDeleteGood observation of your second portion of the experiment i think it was a good choice in doing the experiment with more than one person so that you could be able to see different reactions and make the assignment easier for yourself. It also seemed that you grabbed a lot from this experiment.
ReplyDelete