Human Dynamics in Nanoseconds: The Intelligence of our Emotional Brain

Interpersonal Communication Non-Trivia

How Fast Can We Understand Spoken Words?

The Research says….

• Humans can mentally process speech at rates of about 600 words per minute. However, most of us speak only 100 to 150 words per minute. (Adler, Proctor, & Towne, p. 256)

Our brains only need about one second of every minute we’re listening to understand the words that are spoken, which means are brains are busy doing other things while “listening” to others. Setting aside the fact that all this spare time provides ample opportunity to be carried away by distractions, what are we doing with all that time when we are “listening” to others?

Much of our time is spent examining and processing the non-verbal elements of someone’s communication, which can include tone of voice, pitch, other vocalizations besides words (er, hum, uh), body language, and most importantly, facial expressions.

How Important Is Non-Verbal Communication in Getting Across Your Message?

The Research says…

• 93% of the emotional impact of a message comes from nonverbal sources (Adlelr, Protor, & Town, p. 211).

• Human faces can make 10,000 distinct facial expressions [as measured by Paul Ekman and Wally Friesen’s Facial Action Coding System] (Ekman, p. 14)*

• A “micro-expression” can move across a person’s face in less than one-fifth of a second, and is “an important source of leakage, revealing an emotion a person is trying to conceal.” (Ekman, p. 15)

The ability to accurately read other’s non-verbal behavior is an essential competency of emotional intelligence, which most social scientists now believe to be a more accurate predictor of success in work and relationships than traditional IQ.

• “In tests with over 7,000 people in the United States and 18 other countries, the benefits of being able to read feelings from non-verbal cues included being better adjusted emotionally, more popular, more outgoing, and — perhaps not surprisingly — more sensitive…and had better relationships with people of the opposite sex.” (Goleman, p. 97)

What about cultural differences in nonverbal cues?

Basic facial expressions and the core emotions they communicate are universal across all cultures, even those most remote from other societies. This conclusion is now commonly accepted by communication scholars around the world, contrary to popular notions that non-verbal behavior is learned in, and distinct among our social and cultural groups. Ekman explains cultural differences in superficial interpretations of facial expressions to differences in “display rules” that cultures dicate.

The Research says…

• An interesting experiment by Ekman showed that when Japanese and Americans were alone while watching gory films, they automatically made the same facial expressions. A change occurred when the research subjects saw the films in the company of scientists, with the Japanese more frequently “masking” their automatic fearful expressions with a smile. (p.4)

Doesn’t everyone try to cover up their feelings? We can’t talk about our true feelings in most situations!

It’s true that one sign of emotional intelligence is being able to “manage” our emotions, say some psychologists. Today there is much debate about the degree to which we actually can control or manage our feelings. A key point here is that we should at least understand the power of emotions in communicating the actual, rather than just the intended message when we, or others speak. We need to “decode” the emotion underlying the words of others, and we need to be aware, as speakers, of the emotion we may inadvertently be communicating.

The Research says…

• “Words are representations of emotions, not the emotions themselves. Emotion is a process, a particular kind of automatic appraisal influenced by our evolutionary and personal past, in which we sense that something important to our welfare is occurring, and a set of physiological changes and emotional behaviors begins to deal with the situation. Words are only one way to deal with our emotions, and we do use worlds when emotional, but we can not reduce emotion to words” (Ekman, p. 13).

• “When our automatic appraisal process is triggered by a potential threat, emotions take over our entire body system “in milliseconds, directing what we do and say and think” – without conscious thought! This is obvious when facing life-threatening situations such as a violent attacker, fire, or car accident.

Ekman gives a great example of an impending car accident. We automatically hit the brake and take evasive action. Heart pumping, sweating, blood rushing to our legs, a vivid expression of fear contorts our face – even if alone in the car.

“These responses occur because over the course of evolution it has been useful for others to know when we sense danger, and it has similarly been useful to be prepared to run when afraid.” (p. 20

Sensing danger and communicating emotional reactions that may be out of place

Instinctual, automatic responses of the emotional brain explain much about our reactions in the face of real danger, but today, humans are not in constant need of detecting threats to life and limb. However, these evolutionary reactions explain a lot of what happens during modern interpersonal communication exchanges.

A simple comment by a co-worker could be interpreted as a threat to our job, to our livelihood, and security. It feels life-threatening. In milliseconds our emotional brain has taken over with its own evaluative process, the autonomic nervous system has kicked in and we are speaking and acting without conscious thought. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book (Blink, a best-seller) on this kind of “rapid cognition” that is used to assess nearly every aspect of our daily encounters.

• He cites a study by psychologist Nalini Ambady, in which students were able to accurately rate a teacher’s effectiveness by watching just two seconds of a video clip – without the sound. Although Gladwell asserts that we can usually trust our lightening fast instincts, and often make good decisions within seconds, he also devotes considerable time discussing the reasons why, and how “our instincts betray us” (p. 14).

“When our powers of rapid cognition go awry, the go awry for a very specific and consistent set of reasons, and those reasons can be identified and understood. It is possible to learn when to listen to that powerful onboard computer and when to be wary of it, says Gladwell.” (p. 15.)

How? Tune in next time!

(*For a truly fascinating read about non-verbal communication, see Paul Ekman’s book, Emotion’s Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. Ekman is an adviser to movie studios who make those incredible animated movies that have fish and elephants displaying intricate facial and body language that communicates an emotional repertoire equal to humans! Ekman also consults with law enforcement agencies around the world, such as the FBI and CIA, to help predict whether people are lying. )

References

Adler R. B., Proctor R. F., & N. Towne. (2005). Looking Out, Looking In. Thomson Wadsworth.

Ekman, P., (2003). Emotions revealed: Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. New York: Henry Holt and Companies.

Gladwell, M., (2005). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. Back Bay Books / Little Brown and Company.

Why Study Interpersonal Communication?

I greatly admire the honesty and irony expressed in the following quotations from Robert Bolton’s People Skills. His book has been a primary text and resource for scores of teachers, trainers, and others who facilitate development of interpersonal communication skills.

“Effective communication is not something that has come easily to me. I suppose that if I had been especially capable in interpersonal communication from my childhood on, I would never have studied it so tenaciously. It was because communication was a problem for me that I researched it, tried out what I learned, taught it, and wrote about it.

“One of the ironies of modern civilization is that, though mechanical means of communication have been developed beyond the wildest flight of the imagination, people often find it difficult to communicate face to face. In this age of technological marvels we can bounce messages off the moon and land space probes on Mars, but we find it difficult to relate to those we love.

“Nathan Miller caustically remarked that ‘conversation in the United States is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared the listener.’”

Interpersonal communications is one of the richest and most interesting subjects to study. It is also essential to our physical, psychological, sociological, and societal health. While some may believe that space is the “last frontier” of human exploration, those of us engaged in the study of communication believe that our internal and relational regions are truly the least understood frontiers in need of more advanced human understanding. If we cannot learn to relate and communicate more effectively, we humans may not be around long enough to use our great technological progress on problems such as disease, poverty, and environmental degradation.