1 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
Non-Verbal Communication in Flirting, Empathy and Stratum Herman Ong Upper Iowa University
2 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
Abstract For many years, non-verbal communication is well-examined in different aspects especially for the need of daily social interaction, such as greeting manner and conveying emotions. However, non-verbal communication also plays a critical role in human innate behavior and intentions, such as flirting, empathy and stratum convey which are crucial processes for evolutionary principle: sex selection and natural selection. But the cultural difference in these behavior have neglected among contemporary researchers. This study attempt to discuss the importance and prevalence of non-verbal messages in flirting, empathy and stratum across vary cultures. By comparing the different non-verbal communications in different countries, individuals of same species, Homo sapiens, do express and behave differently to some universal motivations. It suggested that cultural difference is necessary to be accounted when examine the human motivation and innate drive in future.
3 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
Non-verbal communication in flirting, empathy and stratum Over several centuries ago, the origin of human had been seen as a mystery and debated controversially. Many scholars attempted to explain this topic through the different aspects, such as philosophical metaphysics to the ontology (Mitchell, 2011) and theology’s watchmaker etc (Dawkins, 2006). However, these theories were not flawless to clarify the question of origin until the late 19 century. In 1872, Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, proposed that human are evolved no different from other organisms. Animals have the same origin and those are driven by two universal principles: Sexual selection and natural selection. This theory has impacted the world at that time and up to now. No surprise that human, Homo sapiens, accepted this is the way they originated willingly or unwillingly. In order to adapt to the environment and success in reproduction, human have to apply different ways and strategies for surviving and reproductive success: fighting with offenders, attracting mates, finding foods, avoiding the natural disaster, controlling resources and allying same peers (Matsumoto, 2006). All of them underlie the information gathering and processing, this is one of the advances developed in human which called communication. Among a variety of communications, non-verbal communication plays a critical role in conveying information universally. However, in consistent with evolution, even the non-verbal communication can be very specific to different population due to different cultures (Buss, 2001). Same intention and need may have a huge different in forms of
4 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
communication to two individual cultures. For example, the same purpose of attracting mates, one population may use eye contact while another population may involve a great deal of body gestures. Validity of the way one use directly affects the effectiveness as well as determining his reproductive success or not. Therefore, this study we attempt to discuss how the different cultures affect the non-verbal communication in order to help people success in following universal intentions of human: flirting and attracting mates, showing empathy to alliance and stratum-showing in populations. Discussion Non-verbal communication and flirting. Flirting is primary but crucial to reproductive success in any organism. It helps to send or receive a sexual interest to mating partner through the synchronization of behavior or intention (Buss, 1988, 1989). Flirting always take place in non-verbal format (Lott & Veronsky, 1999), because it is universally occurs not just in linguistic-enabled human but other species. In general, flirting can be initiated by male or female. Men may arch his back, using a large and grandiose gestures or walk strutting to show his masculinity while women may attract the men with repeated short glances, twirling or exposing her neck. Researchers found that it is very common and consistence in Europe, such as French or Sweden (Hock, 2007). However, when compare with the Muslim’s countries, this universal flirting may be expressed totally difference in case. In Europe, flirting is common and proactive. Both male and female can initiate the flirting
5 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
behavior when interested in someone. In general, they will initiate the flirting by eye contact, a short glance or long gazing to show he or she has interested in one, and then they will get closer to one’s safety zone and physical touch can be predicted. Elbow or arm touch with the smile is very common flirting signal in Europe. But in Saudi Arabia, one of the Muslim countries, physical touch between opposite sex is prohibited, even to the flirting behavior in public (BBC News, 2010). When Muslim’s female meets a male in the street, they cannot have any eye-contact with them, not saying a glance or gaze. This is the modest belief proposed by Muslim’s religion. Nevertheless, this non-verbal silence precisely is a form of flirting in Muslim’s women. By using this silence, Muslim’s women shows a signal to male in which they are not the causal sexual partner but very serious to the romantic relationship. Since Muslim religion asserts and encourages the belief of “modest” and “behave”, more “modest” and “behave” of the Muslim’s female, more attractive of her to the male. Therefore, while Western countries encourage the physical touch or eye-contact to flirt, Muslim countries prefer the flirt by silence and avoidance. In fact, this huge difference of flirting implicates one cultural difference between Western and Muslim’s countries. It is “Masculine-dominant vs. sex-equality” (DeVito, 2009). European countries, such as French and Sweden are highly “sex-quality” culture while Muslim country, such as Saudi Arabia is a highly “masculine” culture. In highly masculine culture, men are shaped as aggressive and dominant while women are shaped as modest and
6 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
behaved. In Muslim’s countries, even the natural and innate right of any organism– flirting and mating is always controlled by male. Distinct hierarchy can be found in terms of the status and stratum of men and women in Muslim’s countries. Power, competitiveness, right and success can only be expressed and take place in males but not females. No sex discrimination will be found because women have educated and pre-determined as assistance even inferior to male since childhood. They perceived this is a fact to the entire world. However, in biological perspective, female are more relational-driven while male are more competitiveness-driven (Hock, 2007). This male-dominant culture may loop the vicious cycle in which dictators and competitive war will show up again and again in Muslim countries through the reinforcement of competitive-male culture but suppression of relational-female culture. On the other hand, in French or Sweden, people emphasis the equality and quality of life, regardless of male or female. By this sex-equality culture, people are more likely to eliminate the pre-determine status or stratum, they encourage the liberal, right and value. Therefore, the right of flirting, even to the right of human life is always respected in these sex-equality countries. Non-verbal communication and empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand others internal states, such as feeling and emotion. It is innate because empathy show up in human accompany with the perspective taking in the development of childhood (Eisenberg et al., 2002). Empathy is critical to ally and union the peers by understanding and sharing mutual
7 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
feeling and emotion. It conveys a friendly and trustful signal to peers. There have many universal ways to express the empathy to other people, such as soothing, hugging and facial expression (Santrock, 2009). However, Chinese definitely has the huge difference in empathetic behavior from other western countries. To American or French, hugging and physical touch would be encouraged to sooth and comfort people. Sometimes they may cry or emotional expressed together with hug. But to Chinese, they are rarely to hug, say nothing to reciprocal crying. Even to the parent-children relationship, hugging and physical soothing are very unusual in Chinese. Chinese parent usually prefers the emotional-dismissive style rather than emotional-coaching style which are deny and ignore the children’s negative emotion instead of coping it (Gottman, 2008). For example, when heard a friend’s family pass away. Chinese people usually are being silent or numb while American or French would come to hug him or her tightly and discharge emotions. This implicated a cultural difference in Chinese and French which is “High Touch vs. Low Touch” culture. People in the high touch culture will not avoid the touching behavior, for example, in a crowded MTR, it is very common to see the French using hand to mildly push away the people and lean through. While it is seldom to see this action occurs in Chinese. They may use the bag covering their body to prevent their body from touching or use the shoulder to breach a way out. The main point is to avoid any sensitive touching contact. Thus, by this low touch culture, traditional Chinese do less handshaking, instead they
8 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
bow to represent welcome. Even sometimes Chinese couple will walk separately in the street, style of one-forward-one-backward instead of holding hands. However, to French, they don’t avoid touching, men will kiss the women’s cheek when first meet. Even in intimate relationship, French kiss is dramatically high touching than other cultures. These examples also show us another cultural difference between Chinese and French apart from touching. It is general self-esteem. Chinese have less tolerance to their safety zone, they feel insecure and sensitive to any stimulus, thus they are more likely to negatively interpret the touching behavior from others is a sign of intrusion. In general, Chinese are assumed to view themselves less positively than other western people (Brown & Cai, 2010). This may because of their lower self-esteem correlated with the economic and nation power since late Qing Dynasty, or the intrinsic physiological difference between the Asian and European, such as body size and strength. Non-verbal communication and stratum. Society is a milestone and foundation to human civilization. In order to construct a society, there should have a system. And the system should have layers. These layers are called stratum in human society (Durkheim, 1997). The difference of stratum in human society is determined by the possession of resource or power. More resources or powers one have, higher stratum he belongs to. In general, stratum can be reflected through body appearance and artifactual cues, such as clothing or life styling. However, people in different cultures have the different ways and
9 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
strategies to convey their stratum. For example, a man of wealth in western cultures may dress gorgeous and living luxuriously while a man of wealth in Chinese may dress no difference to the middle-class or even deliberately lower his class with dressing poor. This is especially obvious when someone comes rich by accident, such as winning the mark six or lottery. In fact, this example precisely shows the cultural difference of “Individualism vs. Collectivism” (DeVito, 2009). It is well-known that Chinese is a high-collectivism country, they emphasis collective interest, social expectation and benevolence. While Americans focus on individual interest, achievement and hedonism. By this collective interest, the wealth of one Chinese person is supposed to share with his or her family or relative. One person comes rich will be viewed as an opportunity to all relatives. Everyone plan for that wealth. However, in order to avoid the wealth being exploited by others, a man of wealth will always behave as lower-class, such as dressing poor and live in low-profile. All of these non-verbal behaviors convey one signal that “I don’t want to share with you guys”. However, on the other side, American believes that success and achievement is personal. It is no necessary to share with anyone, even to the parent. It is common in United States of American to find an old parent who lives in lower-class and sponsored by government has a rich son or daughter. Individuals in individualistic countries are total separated from each other. Therefore, this belief lead them no concern to convey their stratum openly, including dressing nice and living luxurious.
10 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
Conclusion Conclusively, besides of the non-verbal communications in daily social interactions, such as introducing gestures or goodbye gestures. Non-verbal communication also plays a critical role in determining the crucial behavior of human, which is flirting, allying and convey stratum. However, these non-verbal behaviors are not as obvious as greeting gestures, rather than that, they are very subtle and rooted deeply in every cultures. Although it is very easy and common to overlook, we cannot ignore them because it represents the core of human motivation and traits. In fact, in spite of focus on discussing how non-verbal communication makes us different in social interaction, we should shed more light on the relationship between non-verbal communication and innate drive of human. This is the effective way to examine how the environmental factor- culture can dramatically change and impact the universal principle of organism. I hope this paper can initiate an attention to scholars who can redirect their focus on cultural difference to evolutionary psychology.
11 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
Reference BBC News. (2010). Saudi men arrested for 'flirting'. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7260314.stm Brown, J., & Cai, H. (2010). Self-esteem and trait importance moderate cultural differences in self-evaluations. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41(1), 116-123. doi:10.1177/0022022109349509 Buss, D. M. (1988). The evolution of human intrasexual competition: Tactics of mate attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 616-628. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.4.616 Buss, D. M. (2001). Human nature and culture: An evolutionary psychological perspective. Journal of Personality, 69(6), 955-978. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.696171 Buss, D. M. (2004). Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences: Evolutionary Hypotheses Tested in 37 Cultures. In H. T. Reis, C. E. Rusbult, H. T. Reis, C. E. Rusbult (Eds.) , Close relationships: Key readings (pp. 135-151). Philadelphia, PA US: Taylor & Francis. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. DeVito, J. A. (2009). The Interpersonal Communication Book. Pearson Education. NY. Dawkins, R. (2006). The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Group. London. Darwin, C. (1859, 2009). On the Origin of Species. London: Penguin Classics. Durkheim, E. (1997). The division of labor in society. Free Press.
12 NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN FLIRTING, EMPATHY AND STRATUM
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Guthrie, I. K., & Reiser, M. (2002). The role of emotionality and regulation in children's social competence and adjustment. In L. Pulkkinen, A. Caspi, L. Pulkkinen, A. Caspi (Eds.) , Paths to successful development: Personality in the life course (pp. 46-70). New York, NY US: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511489761.003 Gottman, J. M. (2008). Research on parenting. Retrieved from March 25 2008 from www.gottman.com Hock, R. R. (2007). Human sexuality. Pearson education. NJ. Lott, D. A., & Veronsky, F. (1999). The new flirting game. Psychology Today, 32(1), 42. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Matsumoto, D. (2006). Culture and Nonverbal Behavior. In V. Manusov, M. L. Patterson, V. Manusov, M. L. Patterson (Eds.) , The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 219-235). Thousand Oaks, CA US: Sage Publications, Inc. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Mitchell, H. B. (2011). Roots of Wisdom: A Tapestry of Philosophical Traditions. Wadworth. Boston. Santrock, J. W. (2009). Child development. McGraw-Hill. NY.