The Consequences Of Nonverbal Communication

get more personal space. Though judging Rachel’s response to Ross in the first clip, she doesn’t suspect a thing and he has succeeded in deceiving her that he likes to cuddle. Ross gets away with this deception because nonverbally, nothing seems off about his actions. He kisses her and shows affection, as he would do if he were truly agreeing with her. Thus, Ross has mastered nonverbal skills to intentionally deceive Rachel that they are on the same page about cuddling. Furthermore, Ross’ successful deception is significant to this clip because if it had failed, the outcome of the conversation would have changed dramatically. Additionally, it can be argued that Ross deceived Rachel in a selfish attempt to avoid get yelled at, rather than to

In the clip from Friends, channel discrepancy occurs when Janice believes Chandler think she looks fat because he looked at her before answering that she didn’t. However, this situation is one of the few times where the verbal message was actually what Chandler meant and the nonverbal message was interrupted the wrong way. While most of the time the nonverbal message is what the person truly feels, nonverbal communication is still ambiguous and sometimes interrupted incorrectly, like in this example. For this specific situation with channel discrepancy, there are a few terms Chandler could utilize to negate the miscommunication. For instance, as Ross and Rachel mention, Chandler misused his eyes by casting a look at Janice before answering her question. Therefore, looking at this from an oculesics perspective, Chandler could have communicated better with his eyes, by using direct eye contact throughout the conversation instead of glancing at Janice before answering. It’s small nonverbal cues like glances that can be ambiguous and misinterpreted. Furthermore, Chandler could have used language, “the system of symbols (words) that we use to think about and communicate experiences and feelings” (p.108), to assure Janice that his nonverbal movements weren’t representative of his thoughts. From the clip, the viewer can gather that Chandler only replied

As shown in the clip from Friends, Ross successfully deceives Rachel through keeping his face neutral as he normally would if he was telling the truth. In any situation where one is trying to deceive another, masking, “the replacement of an expression that shows true feelings with an expression that shows appropriate feelings” (p.104), will make the lie more believable. If Rachel suspects nothing suspicious about Ross’ facial expression, deception is more likely to occur. Furthermore, Ross also could practice his pitch, which involves variations in his voice that give prominence to certain words or syllables (p.105). Often times when someone is intentionally trying to deceive, their voice pitch rises and makes their lie unbelievable. If Ross were to have a later conversation with Rachel about cuddling where he was still trying to deceive her, I recommend he keep his pitch consistent with how he normally would when telling the truth. Thus, while attempting deception, masking facial expressions is important and pitch control would make the message more