The importance of non-verbal communication

You know, something really interesting that occurred to me, is that as a species, we are uniquely disconnected from our "gut feelings" in favor of processing verbal content. You can see it in "The Dog whisperer", where he shows how dogs can immediately sense people's state of mind, mood, ability to lead, whether or not they are calm, and so on. They can immediately sense and respond to your "energy" through very subtle things like the way you hold the leash, how you breath or how you stand. Now humans can definitely read all that stuff, and we DO, but we prioritize processing verbal content over this. As a result, we habitually suppress that type of information, or take much longer to pay as much attention to it as the things that are SAID.

One reason is that our mind is complex and has a layer of abstract thought, which is very dominant. Another reason is that CULTURALLY, we teach ourselves to pay attention to words over gestures and non-verbals.

We even have the idea that since we cannot objectively interpret non-verbal cues, that it is best to ignore them. That's why dogs can sense moods so much better than we do. Let me give you an example... You are shopping at a supermarket late at night. Someone in line behind you starts asking you about the price of products. They are asking you what are you buying and whom you are buying it for. Now the verbal information may be very trivial, but the non-verbal... wooha! Danger Will Robinson! The non-verbal communicates that this person has a right to cross your boundaries without asking permission. If they do this with information, it is a good indication that they can do it physically as well. That's also why a person can spend a long time debating someone else who is treating them as if their life, feelings and well being do not matter, and keep responding to the verbal ideas being put forth. This doesn't just work for negative non-verbals, but for positive ones as well. But as a society, we will tend to deny non-verbals and many times scold someone for making them explicit. We have the habit of lying about them. Because, verifying them is more difficult to do objectively. And if we want to function as a society, we would like to be able to agree on the facts. But - does it serve us, if it can land us in a situation where we accept a truth like: "My feelings don't matter" over facts about China in the 1920's as more important?