Non Verbal

Introduction

Recently our class was given an assignment on nonverbal communication. We were asked to observe the nonverbal behavior of two people interacting with one another. On October second, 2007, I scouted an observation location for the assignment. I thought about places I could go and observe people without it being obvious that I was watching them. At 2:35 p.m. I determined that the Starbucks on campus was a good place to observe nonverbal behavior. The Starbucks is centrally located on campus in the basement of the Harden Learning Resources Center. I started my observations at 2:40 p.m. and ended them at 3:15 p.m. The people I chose to observe were sitting outside the Starbucks at one of the small round tables that line the hallway. The hallway is pretty noisy and there is a lot of foot traffic passing through. It is also a fairly bright hallway from the lights overhead which are standard school lights. There are quite a few people sitting at the tables outside of Starbucks drinking coffee, talking, playing on computers, and reading. I chose to observe two people sitting at one of the tables; one male and one female.

Observation of Person One

The first person that I focused on was the female. She was sitting closely to the male and her body was turned to face his direction. Her chin was resting in her hands and she was making eye contact with the male as he talked. I saw her roll her eyes at him indicating that she was annoyed with what he was saying at the moment. Then she laughed, so maybe it was annoying but funny. Or maybe he was telling a story and someone in the story did something annoying or idiotic.

Then the female started talking about something. As she talked she leaned in further towards the male like it was a secret or maybe just noisy in the hallway. As the female talked to the male she lightly touched his arm a couple of times which would indicate to me that the two were comfortable with one another. At one time she even reached out and patted his leg which led me to believe that the two were close with each other or maybe even dating.

Observation of Person Two

When I observed the male I became aware of his nonverbal communication behaviors which were a little different than those of the female. He sat more straightforward in his chair and more or less turned his head to talk to her. He was on his computer at the time so