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Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “A comparison of Non-verbal Maternal Care of Male and Female Infants in India and the United Kingdom: The Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale in Two Cultures”, by Hodsoll, J.; Pickles, A.; Bozicevic, L.; Supraja, T. A.; Hill, J.; Chandra, P. S. and Sharp, H. (2022), in which authors carry out two simultaneous studies, one in India and other in UK, to discover if there are any differences regarding how mothers behavior with their babies, focusing on “the loving touch”.

A mother’s care for her children is an essential characteristic for the correct development of mammals. Not only to guarantee their survival through their food and nutrition, but also for their physiological, cognitive, social and emotional development.

Care includes, in general terms, food, care for physical health, sensory and intellectual stimulation, security, emotional warmth and affection, comfort when in distress, and also the response to the needs and communications of the babies.

Although many of these aspects have been studied in depth, the role of touch has received very little attention and the results in this regard are much more limited.

In this paper, authors carry out a cross-cultural study to find out if there are differences in how Indian mothers and British mothers care for their children, specifically, when it comes to the so-called “loving touch”.

Why the “loving touch”? Because, in humans, touch-based care has many times been associated with benefits for babies. Skin-to-skin contact from early in the baby’s life in preterm infants has been associated with positive physiological outcomes for them.

It has also been shown to facilitate mother-infant interaction, making it more receptive and synchronous. It seems to support the development of emotional and cognitive skills in children, such as sustained attention or general control.

Specifically, early parental touch has a positive impact on the infant’s early behavior and physiological response to social stress, including her preschool emotional development.

Therefore, there is no doubt that touch is an important sensory exposure for babies that can shape their development.

As we already know, there are different traditions depending on the country in which we are and the behavior of care was not going to be less.

Several studies have examined early maternal sensitivity in certain cultures, and there is some debate, with some experts arguing that there is no universality of maternal sensitivity.

On the other hand, there are other experts who do support the universality of maternal sensitivity and affirm that its manifestations vary between cultures.

The truth is that care responses can be found from mother to child in all cultures, but they are different. For example, cross-national studies have shown that when Western mothers interact with their babies, they use more proximal behaviors: caressing or patting, for example. They also use distant behaviors, such as talking, looking, or smiling. But in other non-Western cultures, such as India, the baby is massaged daily.

On the other hand, authors were interested in exploring whether there was any variation in the care received by the baby depending on whether he/she was a boy or a girl. In some South Asian populations, boys are favored over girls, and this preference might be relevant to the mothers themselves. In fact, India has the most abnormal levels of female excess mortality in the world in girls aged 1-4 years.

Authors hypothesized that boys would receive greater tactile attention compared to girls.

In the Indian context, a total of 395 mothers participated, and in the United Kingdom, 874. The Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale (PICTS) was produced, which contains questions such as: how often does the mother touch her baby’s back, head , your tummy, arms or legs.

The findings were clear: the rate of reported early caresses in the UK is higher than in India, but there was no difference regarding the sex of the babies.

That is to say, on the one hand, it seems that cultural differences are significant and in India it is much more common to practice daily baby massages than caress, unlike in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, it seems that sexual discrimination is experiencing a certain decrease.

Authors mention that this article may serve to examine in the future if the protective effects that are supposed to appear after these care behaviors are similar for children in India and the United Kingdom, seeing that the care practices are different.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


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Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Body sway predicts romantic interest in speed dating” by Chang, A.; Kragness, H. E.; Tsou, W.; Bosnyak, D. J.; Thiede, A. and Trainor, L. J. (2021), in which authors organize a series of speed dates to study how music and body movements influence the participants’ romantic interests.

Love relationships are one of the most essential social bonds for humans and, in addition, they are fundamental for society.

Because of this, many previous studies have investigated the social and personality factors that are related to the formation and maintenance of these relationships, as well as the happiness and outcomes of them.

One of the aspects that has caught most of the attention of experts and also the general public is the first moment of this bond, that is, the origin, the initial romantic interest. To investigate this, speed dating has been used, which is a process in which people have a series of dates lasting a few minutes with potential romantic partners. The reason for the validity of this method is that it allows good experimental manipulation, in addition to the fact that it has the approval of the scientific community.

However, the role of interpersonal interaction and nonverbal behavior in early romantic interest has rarely been studied scientifically, despite being seen as a crucial factor for individuals.

In this particular article, authors focus on the swaying of the body, the interactive body movements of potential partners involved in speed dating, and how these relate to romantic interest.

Body balance is part of people’s nonverbal behavior and serves as an indicator of interactions in many settings. People rarely sit and stay completely still, they rather make subtle head and body movements, usually unconsciously. 

When two or more people are having a conversation, are in a psychotherapy session, or are playing music at the same time, their body swings tend to be coupled.

We have already mentioned that what is studied in this article is the body balance and its relationship with the initial romantic interest. Well, to evaluate it, the coupling ratios between the balance of one person and the other were examined, throughout the 4 minutes that each appointment took place.

In addition, an interesting factor was taken into account: music. Dating environments often include music in the background, yet the effect of music on early romance has rarely been studied.

Many places where people experience romantic interactions, such as restaurants, bars, and parties, have music. It is known that it drives both intentional and unconscious movements, especially styles like soul, funk or jazz, which have a high level of  “groove”. The “groove” would be the instinct that makes us move and that is born from the musical influence.

Empirical studies have shown that certain types of music promote the swaying of the body, therefore, authors hypothesized that musical rhythm could affect initial romantic interest by improving the coupling of the body sway.

To investigate all this, 55 participants were gathered. There were two dating sessions between men and women of legal age. Different background music was selected for each session. Face-to-face contact between potential partners prior to dates was minimized, and participants were instructed to have conversations and interactions only with their partner at the table. After each date, each participant completed a questionnaire about his/her partner.

Body sway directional coupling was found to predict interest in romantic relationships in the long term, but not in the short term. Specifically, participants seemed to have a greater interest in a long-term relationship if their sway dynamics predicted better their potential partner’s body sway.

This is consistent with previous studies that show that interest in short-term relationships is primarily associated with attractiveness, whereas interest in long-term relationships is associated with personality and socially attractive characteristics, such as intelligence, honesty and warmth.

Authors propose the idea that the coupling of body sway reflects the quality of communication in the couple and reveals the degree of compatible personality characteristics.

On the other hand, regarding music, it is shown that it promotes romantic interest during speed dating, which motivates future research on this topic. However, no evidence was found about music being related to greater sway coupling, which was not consistent with the hypothesis. But it is important to mention that other previous studies show that music with “groove” promotes the incorporation of movement to the interaction and therefore it is necessary to delve into whether it benefits the emergence of romantic bonds.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


Did you know that most human communication is nonverbal? The Master in Nonverbal Behavior will help you understand this invisible part of communication and use it to your advantage in both your personal and professional life. Study at your own pace with this 100% online program and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, guaranteeing high-quality education. All of this from just $208 USD per month.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Effects of color-emotion association on facial expression judgments”, by Takei, A. and Imaizumi, S. (2022), in which authors carry out a couple of experiments to investigate how some colors are associated to emotions when it comes about inferring these from facial expressions. 

Human beings often express emotions by linking them to colors in our day-to-day conversations. For example, in English and Japanese, the color blue is widely used to express sadness (“I’m feeling blue”).

However, we also associate emotions with the visual perception of colors. For example, in WhatsApp we can use a red face emoticon to transmit anger. In fact, it is possible that because anger increases blood flow to the face, making it red, people have learned to see this color in an angry face.

All these linguistic and perceptual associations are part of the color-emotion associations.

Conceptual metaphor theory could explain the color-emotion association. According to this theory, to understand abstract concepts related to thought and action, humans apply the structures of other concrete concepts to specific abstract concepts, which are clear perceptual experiences. In other words, the metaphorical structures of concepts such as “sadness is blue” and “anger is red” facilitate the understanding of concepts related to emotions.

Because of such associations, color perception can remind people of corresponding emotions and even bias their judgments about the emotional stimuli they receive.

For example, in a 2020 study, participants tended to associate anger and love with red, sadness with gray, and joy with yellow. In another 2012 study, words written in red were linked to anger more quickly than words written in blue. This suggests that red is associated with anger and would improve linguistic processing related to it.

In terms of social cognition, it is important for humans to understand the emotional states of others. Facial expressions are especially useful for this, but other resources are also used. Similarly, the colors associated with emotions are also close to the recognition and judgment of emotions combined with facial expressions.

In a 2013 experiment, participants categorized angry faces against red, blue, or gray backgrounds. The results showed that the judgment of angry faces was faster against a red background, suggesting that the color facilitates the recognition of facial expressions.

In another experiment, this one from 2020, participants categorized images of faces and emoticons that represented happiness and anger on a red or green background. Images of anger were re-categorized more quickly correctly on the red background, the same thing happening with happiness and the color green.

Although previous studies like these have suggested color-emotion associations, some have been controversial, such as sadness and the color blue. In some countries there is an association between them, but in others it is associated with positive emotions. In a 2020 study it was suggested that gray was more related to sadness than the color blue, but this idea still needs to be explored further.

To delve into all this and find out which colors some emotions are associated with, the authors carried out a couple of experiments.

The first of them was carried out with 20 subjects and photographs of people showing happiness and sadness were used. They were placed on a yellow, blue or gray colored background, and the participants were asked to ignore the colors and judge whether the face expressed happiness or sadness.

Experiment two, involving 19 people, was the same as the first, except that the background color was shown slightly later than the face, superimposing the facial stimulus on the color stimulus.

The results suggest that yellow, which was thought to be associated with happiness, facilitates the judgment of happy facial expression, which is consistent with previous literature.

However, although blue and/or gray were expected to be associated with sadness, the results did not support this idea.

This is where conceptual metaphor theory comes in again, with the idea that “happiness is light” and “sadness is darkness.”

The contrast of joy and sadness can be interpreted not only as a different emotional valence, but also as extreme differences in brightness.

The results can be interpreted as suggesting that yellow facilitates the judgment of happiness because it activates a metaphorical “light-happiness” association that bright colors provide.

On the other hand, gray and blue might not be colors symbolic of darkness and, therefore, might not activate the “darkness-sadness” association.

Needs to be said that, thanks to experiment 2, it is suggested that the color-emotion association is stronger when color and emotion are perceptually experienced simultaneously.

Authors conclude that it would be very interesting to continue investigating how the luminance and brightness of colors affect the perception of emotions.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


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Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Detecting deception using comparable truth baselines” by Bogaard, G.; Meijer, E. H.; Vrij, A. and Nahari, G. (2022), in which authors carry out a couple of experiments to know how the use of true base lines affects deception detection. 

We have already seen on several occasions throughout the different messages how the human capacity to detect lies is quite poor. Both the skill of laymen and the skill of professionals do not usually exceed the levels of luck.

Among the possible reasons that would explain the deficiency of these skills is the idea that people pay too much attention to behavioral signals, such as aversion to gaze and body movements. The reality is that there is not as much relationship as it is believed between these signs and deception.

Research has also shown that, in order to improve truth-lie detection accuracy, the observers should focus primarily on the content of people’s statements, as this has shown to be a more promising technique.

However, even verbal lie detection tools have a significant error rate, and one potential source of this error rate is individual differences in the verbal behavior of the liar; as meta-analytic research has shown.

That is, whether observers are able to detect a lie depends largely on the qualities of someone’s lying skills.

For example, fantasy-prone people are better at formulating believable lies, and people with verbal skills get away with it more often because they tend to include more detail in their false stories.

This is consistent with the finding that good liars report that they rely heavily on verbal strategies when lying.

One way to include the individual and verbal differences of liars in a lie detection procedure is through the baseline. That is, using a statement that is known to be true, or part of a statement that is also true, to compare between it and the lie.

The idea is that people are telling the truth during small talks, and any difference in behavior between this and the part of the interview that deals with the important issue being investigated is taken as a signal to pay attention to. attention and as a possible indicator of deception.

The problem is that this comparison is confusing. The topics covered in small talk are different from the ones being researched, and depending on the topic and personal relevance, people may respond differently. In addition, what is at stake contrasts substantially.

For this reason, there is the so-called “comparable truth baseline” (CTB). This baseline is used to be considered comparable to the research topic.

Previous studies have thrown up the idea that liars whose lies are accompanied by truth include more details. That is, good liars calibrate their deceptive responses against truthful information. Therefore, two contradictory ideas appear. On the one hand, if liars calibrate the amount of detail they report in their lie based on a previous truthful response, a CTB could decrease the discriminability between the lie and the truth. However, if the liars cannot gauge their responses, the use of a CTB has the potential to improve the discrimination between lying and truth.

That is why, in two different experiments, two aspects are investigated: first, if providing a CTB influences the detail of a subsequent statement provided by the same person; and second, if using a CTB statement would improve lie detection ability thanks to verbal cues.

In the first experiment 171 people participated; in the second, 138. In them, the participants were basically assigned the role of telling the truth or lying according to certain conditions, a process that is more explained in the original article, and then passing their complete statement through a tool used to evaluate the credibility of the speech , which is Reality Monitoring.

The analysis showed the existence of an interesting verbal pattern: the objective statements (the main ones and references to the research topics) of the truth tellers tend to include more temporal and auditory details than their reference statement, or their CTB, while the liars’ results showed the opposite pattern.

In the first of the experiments, no evidence appeared that the use of a CTB improves the accuracy when detecting truths and lies.

In experiment 2, those who used the CTB became worse at truth detection, but just as accurate at lie detection, compared to those who did not use the CTB.

However, authors mention that their results should be interpreted with caution, because their support is weak and it seems premature to use them as a reference. Therefore, they encourage other researchers to continue delving into this topic, plus, they leave the door open for future related experiments.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


The analysis of nonverbal behavior is a competitive advantage in any field. If you want to develop this skill, the Master in Nonverbal Behavior is your best option. Study 100% online and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, ensuring internationally recognized education. Start your training from just $208 USD per month.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Predicting Dishonesty When the Stakes are High: Physiologic Responses During Face-to-Face interactions identifies who Reneges on Promises to Cooperate”, by Zak, P. J.; Barraza, J. A.; Hu, X.; Zahedzadeh, G. and Murraya, J. (2022), in which the authors carry out an experiment where the subjects participate in a financial game, plus, they try to obtain evidence that there are some physiological changes that, according to previous literature, are produced in the body when one lies. 

We already know that communication and face-to-face interactions can influence the decisions we make, due to multiple non-verbal factors and even of a different nature that can activate stereotypes, such as gender, clothing, tattoos, attractiveness…

This is especially important in strategic and negotiation cases, where communication can increase each other’s understanding and strengthen cooperation, improving outcomes for both parties.

In addition, a very important fact is that the interactions prior to making decisions, the innocent or banal talks, also influence the strategic process. It is believed that, for the most part, they can increase cooperation.

Even so, we must take into account, in this era in which telematic meetings replace face-to-face meetings, that this influence of communication occurs much more easily in face-to-face meetings and not so much in remote meetings.

However, the opportunities to communicate also provide the opportunity to deceive and cheat. Deception and manipulation are the key of many strategic interactions, including military operations, negotiations, or even playing poker.

But there’s bad news for liars: concealment and distortion require extra cognitive effort. Deception involves several cognitive processes that are very costly, for example, the use of working memory and response inhibition. Physiological arousal, anxiety during communication, pupil dilation, among others, are signs associated with deception.

In addition, stress levels can be measured because the hormones associated with it increase their presence in the blood, so if lying causes stress, it could be found out when it is happening by observing the level of these hormones in our body.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is believed that creatures that live in groups, such as humans, have had to develop physiological mechanisms to identify individuals that are likely to cooperate with the group or not.

Some of these mechanisms may be consciously recognizable, such as the Duchenne smile. Others are only perceived unconsciously.

Authors’ intentions with this study were to assess the trust between adults who communicate face to face before participating in a game where, in pairs, and if they cooperate, they can win a significant amount of money.

75 subjects participated in the experiment. They had to participate in the so-called “trust game”. In it, software assigned pairs and a role to each of the two people in each pair. Player 1 had to transfer an amount of money to player 2, which would come from his own reserve. What was transferred to player 2 would be multiplied by a certain value. Player 2 would be notified of the amount received and should return to player 1 one quantity that would not be multiplied. If the cooperation between the two of them was good, he could earn up to $500.

Experts point out that the transfer from player 1 to player 2 measures trust, while the transfer from player 2 to player 1 measures trustworthiness.

However, the most interesting thing about this experiment is that the players had a chat for a couple of minutes before participating in the game. They were told that they could discuss a strategy to follow between them, although it was not mandatory.

The results obtained suggested that, although almost all the conversations between the pairs of the game resulted in a cooperative commitment, approximately one third of the players did not keep their promises. The initial hypothesis that researchers had was that high levels of stress hormones would be observed in those who lied. By measuring hormone levels before and after the interaction, it was seen how those who had lied had an increase in this type of hormone in their blood.

Additionally, when players lied, they reported, in post-game self-reports, increased negative emotions, revealing the psychological cost of cheating.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


The analysis of nonverbal behavior is a competitive advantage in any field. If you want to develop this skill, the Master in Nonverbal Behavior is your best option. Study 100% online and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, ensuring internationally recognized education. Start your training from just $208 USD per month.

If you prefer, you can obtain your Certificate in Nonverbal Communication by clicking here.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper  “Shall I Show My Emotions? The Effects of Facial Expressions in the Ultimatum Game” by Ferracci, S.; Giuliani, F.; Brancucci, A. and Pietroni, D. (2021), in which authors carry out two experiments to know how the expression of some emotions affect the most tense moments in a negotiation. 

In recent years it has been shown that emotions play an essential and central role in the communication of intentions and desires.

Emotions and the information associated with them can be transmitted through facial expressions during specific social interactions, where their inference can influence decision-making processes, such as negotiations.

The ultimatum game has a lot to do with negotiations. It was developed forty years ago as a representation of the reality of negotiations. In this game, a player proposes how to allocate a certain amount of money between himself and another player. This second player can accept the proposal, in which case one will receive the decided amount, or he can reject it, causing neither player to receive any money.

According to classical economics, the respondent has to accept any offer greater than 0, since anything is better than nothing. However, it has been observed that participants tend to reject offers that are approximately below 30% of the total, preferring not to win anything rather than accept an unequal distribution of money. Therefore, in front of classical economic theory, human behavior and its intolerance to inequality appear.

From this idea, the question arises as to how the expression of human emotions influenced the negotiations, a topic that has been studied previously.

In some of these earlier articles, it appears that offers made with a smiling face were accepted more often than those made with a neutral facial expression. Also, there used to be lower acceptance rates if the offers were made by a person with an angry facial expression.

The responder’s behavior, on the other hand, might be more driven by the sense of perceived fairness and fairness that we discussed earlier.

For studies that had the participant assume the role of the proposer, Van Dijk studied the effects of responder joy and anger on the proposer’s offers. He found that the respondent’s anger led the proposer to make better offers.

These studies indicate that proponents must be very careful in capturing the emotional state of the respondent, as they can then use the information obtained to modulate their subsequent responses.

The role of anger is also interesting, with controversial results. For one thing, studies show that when the responder reacts in anger, the proponent makes more concessions. But on the other hand, there are studies that claim the opposite.

Authors decide to explore this and other questions in two experiments. 113 people participated in the first of them. The authors selected images of faces that were manipulated to offer four expressions: happy, neutral, angry and disgusted. The participants, in this case, were the ones who might answer whether or not they accepted the offer.

In the second experiment, all participants were assigned the opposite role, that of proposer. 134 subjects participated and the methodology and procedure were the same.

The results showed that, in experiment one, for the respondent the decision is strongly driven by fairness in supply, as the authors expected.

Emotions also had an effect: neutral emotion and happiness led to higher rates of acceptance compared to anger and disgust.

Some theories have attempted to explain irrational behaviors in equity-related decision-making, such as “inequality aversion”, which confirms individuals’ preferences for fair outcomes.

On the other hand, in experiment two, the participants, in the role of the proponents, modulated their offers based on the expressions they saw on the faces of the responders.

Specifically, anger and disgust had no differential effects and were perceived as equally negative. More generous offers were made to those with neutral expressions, and even more generous ones to those with happy facial expressions.

So what about the anger and previous studies with conflicting ideas? A study carried out by Steinel and colleagues proposes the idea that anger would have one effect or another depending on where it is projected.

When the emotion is directed to the offer, it can be understood as a strategy to know the limits of the opponent and, therefore, can lead to greater concessions.

Conversely, if the emotion is directed at the person, it can lead to negative outcomes, indicating poor cooperation.

Authors point out the need for further research, especially to understand the effects of anger and disgust in depth, and to improve these experiments, for example, with real and higher incentives.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


Did you know that most human communication is nonverbal? The Master in Nonverbal Behavior will help you understand this invisible part of communication and use it to your advantage in both your personal and professional life. Study at your own pace with this 100% online program and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, guaranteeing high-quality education. All of this from just $208 USD per month.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Hong Kong women project a larger body when speaking to attractive men”, by Lee, A. and Ng, E. (2022), in which authors carry out a small experiment to know whether heterosexual women make changes in their voices when they’re speaking to men they find attractive. 

Does having a beautiful voice bring us social benefits? According to some studies, it seems so. Listeners tend to associate it with an attractive face, a nice personality, and even good health.

In addition, perceiving a person as attractive and more likeable leads to advantages in dating, job applications, promotions at work, public elections, more social support…

However, although physical appearance cannot be easily altered, the voice can be modulated and thereby it is possible to influence the perception that others have of our appearance.

So how to get this? What are the voice modulation tendencies to influence our physical attractiveness?

There are two apparently conflicting hypotheses that seek to explain the phonetics of an attractive voice. They are the average hypothesis and the body size projection.

The first hypothesis defends the phenomenon of average attractiveness, arguing that voices similar to the media in the population are considered more attractive.

From an evolutionary point of view, the average voice may indicate good genes as it has resisted adaptive changes and has become the norm, producing an effect similar to that of average faces, which seem to suggest good physical condition and health.

On the other hand, the body size projection hypothesis holds that animals use their voice to project different body sizes and fulfill certain communicative functions.

Extending this idea to humans, one study found that an attractive male English voice to heterosexual female listeners was one that sounded like it came from a large and tall person, while the opposite was true for a female voice and heterosexual male listeners.

In general, it seems that an attractive voice is one that resembles the average of the population, with certain projected body sizes that add enhancement effects, but without deviating from the average.

It has been seen, however, that American female speakers are increasingly using a certain screeching tone in their voices. This seems to deviate from the projection principle of body size, as this feature is considered to belong to a large body because of its loudness. There is also evidence that the use of a scratchy voice by American women is considered less attractive than a normal voice.

Thus, it appears that not all changes in vocal strategies align with what the opposite sex finds attractive.

Other studies conducted with non-Western populations found that while the general principles of average voice and body size projection can be stabilized, there are certain specific deviations depending on the language in which it is spoken. For example, in Japanese and Mandarin, the projection of a very large body size would not be attractive to either men or women.

Building on these insights and studies, authors investigate vocal changes in heterosexual women when they are talking to a man they find attractive, in the context of Cantonese speech.

A total of 19 women participated in the study. They first saw some photographs of men and had to say which ones they found attractive, on a scale of 1 to 10. Based on the previous ratings, they were presented with images of the most attractive men on the one hand, and also the least attractive, and a role-playing game was proposed to women: they had to pretend they and the attractive man were university classmates, and had to ask them a spoken question, which would later be analyzed.

Even with cross-linguistic variations, authors expected that Cantonese women would use at least some cues that projected small body size. Unexpectedly, the participants seemed to be trying to project a big-sounding voice when they spoke with an attractive face.

This may be because they were deliberately trying to sound less nervous or anxious around an attractive potential partner. However, this idea should be interpreted with caution.

Future studies should analyze other factors, authors suggest investigating whether the menstrual cycle has any influence and also increasing the number of study subjects.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


Would you like to learn how to read what people really think through their body language? With the Master in Nonverbal Behavior, you will acquire this valuable skill. Study online at your own pace and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, recognized for its prestige and educational quality, meeting the highest international standards. All of this from just $208 USD per month.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Gender Biases in Estimation of Others’ Pain” by Zang, L.; Reynolds Losin, E. A.; Ashar, Y. K.; Koban, L. and Wager, T. D. (2021), where the authors carry out two experiments to know if women feel or express more pain than men, or if it happens the other way round. 

Accurately estimating the pain of others based on nonverbal signals is an essential aspect of interpersonal communication, since it is the basis of empathy and care.

Acknowledging the pain of others is an increasingly valuable interpersonal skill, both for doctors and for the rest of the population.

Although pain is usually assessed through self-reports, recognition of facial expressions of pain is a very important part of the assessment.

Because expressions of pain are communicative behaviors, observers’ interpretations of those expressions are a crucial aspect of pain communication. These interpretations are affected not only by the characteristics of the expressions of pain, but also by the observer’s knowledge and biases about pain and the characteristics of those who suffer from it.

For example, several studies have shown that psychological treatment is more likely to be recommended for women suffering any kind of pain than for men, who are prescribed painkillers. Therefore, female patients take longer to receive analgesic medication. However, it is important to note that there are other studies of gender bias in pain management that show the opposite pattern, or no significant gender difference.

Despite clinical evidence of underestimation and undertreatment of pain in female patients, laboratory results on gender bias have been inconsistent and, in fact, some studies have found that women felt more pain than men, having note their facial expressions.

That is, it seems that a large part of the results in the evaluation of pain is decided by facial expressions. Therefore, controlling the objective measures of facial expressiveness in general, and of pain in particular, is an important step in stopping the bias in the perceiver.

In this context, there are also gender stereotypes related to pain, for example, that women complain more than men and do not accurately report their pain, or that men are more sensible and when they complain about their pain, it is real. These beliefs would affect pain assessment and treatment.

To delve into the subject, authors conducted two experiments. First, they compared differences in pain estimation in men and women, controlling for the same level of facial expressiveness and also controlling for patients’ self-reported pain. This is necessary because the amount of pain patients experience is highly variable, also because the facial response to pain is one of the most salient cues we use to estimate pain, and lastly, because the expressiveness of patients can affect observer estimates through empathy.

For experiment 1, 50 volunteers participated and had to watch a series of videos of faces of people experiencing pain. Each video was coded through the FACS system, and the action units AU4 (lowering of the eyebrows), AU6 and 7 (contraction of the eyelids), AU9 and 10 (contraction of the elevator) and AU43 (closure of the eyes) were especially relevant. These action units are representative of the emotion of pain.

In addition, the videos included a self-report from the patients where they rated their own pain.

The objective of this experiment was to test whether the sex of the patients affects the estimation of pain according to the observers. The hypothesis was that if the intensity of facial expressions was not controlled, female patients would be perceived as being in more pain than male patients. If, on the other hand, there were similar levels of expression and self-reported pain, it would be the male patients who would be perceived as having more pain.

The results did not support the hypotheses. Male and female patients were not perceived to have different degrees of pain before controlling pain, facial expressiveness, and patient self-reported pain. However, female patients were perceived to have less pain than male patients when facial expressions and self-reports were controlled.

The second experiment was very similar, except that opinion questionnaires about pain treatment and gender stereotypes were added.

In general, women’s pain was underestimated relative to self-reported pain, while men’s was overestimated. In addition, female patients, according to observers, would benefit more from psychotherapy than male patients.

The underestimation of pain and psychologization in the treatment of women’s pain could have very negative side effects on their health. Therefore, the existence of these stereotypes must be taken into account and act accordingly, so that both men and women receive the treatment they need and their health is not harmed.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.


Mastering nonverbal behavior analysis is a fundamental skill in the professional world. With the Master in Nonverbal Behavior, you will not only learn to identify behavior patterns but also understand how they impact communication. This master’s program is 100% online, and upon completion, you will earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States that guarantees international-quality education. Study from just $208 USD per month.

If you prefer, you can obtain your Certificate in Nonverbal Communication by clicking here.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Strong, but Wrong: Lay People’s and Police Officers’ Beliefs about Verbal and Nonverbal Cues to Deception” by Bogaard, G.; Meijer, E. H.; Vrij. A. and Merckelbach, H. (2016),in which authors carry out a study to know how are police officers’ and civilians wrong about the cues to detect deception. 

Deception is the main character of nonverbal communication. There are studies that report that we tell about two lies a day. However, more recent studies have shown that there are many differences at individual levels when it comes to lies and that idea cannot be considered absolute.

Despite this, what all the research says is that we have a lot of experience when it comes about lying and being lied, and yet our ability to detect deception is rarely above the level of chance, including for the police.

One possible explanation may be that people often have incorrect beliefs about what cues are sign of deception. For example, the belief that liars tend to look away has been proven flawed, but most people still trust it. Strömwall and Granhag reported that gaze aversion and increased body movement were strong signals of deception for police, judges, and prosecutors.

People tend to rely heavily on nonverbal cues when delivering verdicts of deception. However, numerous research shows that deception cannot be reliably inferred through only behavior. We also need to pay attention to verbal cues.

Masip (who has been, in several occasions, one of the professors of our master’s degree in Nonverbal Communication and Lie Detection) and Herrero conducted a study in which they asked police officers and civilians how lies could be detected. Both groups mentioned that they relied primarily on nonverbal cues.

Because people tend to rely on nonverbal cues, verbal content is often largely ignored, despite research showing that diagnostic accuracy can be improved when content is trusted. Surprisingly, little research has investigated the beliefs about these types of cues.

Some truth evaluation methods have been developed that are based specifically on the content of a claim, such as criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) or reality monitoring (RM).

The CBCA consists of 19 criteria that are expected to be more present in true statements than in fake ones. For example, there is evidence that liars tend to tell a less coherent story and are less likely to make spontaneous corrections to their stories. Also, they tend to describe fewer replays of conversations.

The CBCA was originally created to assess children’s testimonies in cases of alleged sexual abuse but has been successfully used in numerous studies with adults in different contexts.

The RM is used to analyze whether a memory is originated from a real experience or an imagined event. The reason for this is that a memory made of a real experience arises from perception and, consequently, will contain more sensory, contextual and affective information than memories that originate in the imagination.

Support has been found in previous studies for some RM criteria, for example, that liars include less perceptual, spatial, and temporal information in their stories, and that liars’ stories are less plausible than true stories. 

In the study we are talking about, authors explore participants’ views of verbal and nonverbal cues through open questions, and to further examine their views of verbal cues, they were asked a series of closed questions, obtained from the CBCA and the RM.

The sample consisted of 95 police officers and 104 university students from the Netherlands. Police officers were professional detectives or interrogators with an average experience of 22 years.

When the students and police officers were given the opportunity to list the cues that they believed indicated deception, they spoke of stereotypical, unscientifically unsupported nonverbal cues, such as gaze aversion, nervousness, exaggerated movement, or sweating.

In addition, they mentioned more nonverbal than verbal cues for diagnosing lying, which is in line with previous research.

In the open questions, police officers mentioned fewer clues than the students in general, but among those they did mention, verbal clues predominated.

Most of the behavioral signs mentioned by the participants are based on the idea that lying makes liars anxious, and this anguish is shown in their facial expressions (they blush, sweat, blink…), or in their gestures (they are restless, their body moves, illustrative gestures appear…). However, people underestimate the importance of situational factors that can influence someone’s behavior. For example, truth tellers may also be nervous for reasons apart from deception, if, for instance, the style of the interview is intimidating, or they are afraid of not being believed.

Police officers are more cautious when it comes to talking about signs of deception, probably because making mistakes in their jobs is more serious for them than for the students interviewed.

Probably, these beliefs are so persistent due to the lack of feedback. In other words, no one confesses whether they have actually been lying after an interview, much less in a police environment.

A limitation of the study is that only beliefs about lying were investigated and the actual deception detection performance was not observed.

Although several studies have already shown the dangers of relying on stereotypical nonverbal cues, the current study reveals that people still believe these cues are useful in unmasking liars. 

For professionals, these beliefs are especially harmful. Being aware of them might be enough to gradually shift their attention to verbal cues, which, based on the findings of this article and previous literature, should be more precise.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog. 


Effective communication goes beyond words—it’s in behavior. With the Master in Nonverbal Behavior, you will learn to interpret gestures and micro-expressions that reveal what is left unsaid. The program is 100% online, giving you the freedom to study from wherever you prefer. You will also earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States that guarantees internationally recognized, high-quality education. Study from just $208 USD per month.

If you prefer, you can obtain your Certificate in Nonverbal Communication by clicking here.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Gender affects body language Reading” de Sokolov, A. A.; Krüger, S.; Enck, S.; Krägeloh-Mann, I. y Pavlova, M. A. (2012), they carried out one of the first studies about the different abilities of men and women to understand nonverbal language.

Reading body language has an immense importance when it comes about adaptive social behavior and communication in general. This skill is part of the core of social competences.

Those people who can infer emotions in others, represented by body movements, are likely to be more successful in interacting with other people.

In addition, it is possible to discriminate between deception and truth by observing the body and all the nonverbal information that the person transmits to us, considering it as a whole and analyzing its consistency.

The dynamic body expressions, gestures and actions of others are a very rich and valid source to pay attention to in our social interactions.

It is known from previous literature that emotions expressed by dynamic bodies, compared to faces, elicit greater activation in several areas of the brain, including the superior temporal sulcus, which is critically important in the social brain.

But how do you know who to trust? These judgments are vital to social interaction, and it appears that men and women differ in the cues they pay attention to.

According to generalized beliefs, women show greater sensitivity to nonverbal signals: they better discriminate friendship from sexual interest and are more competent in recognizing emotions on the face. Even women with Asperger’s syndrome would better recognize the emotions of dynamic faces than men.

In addition, women tend to recognize emotions better from faces than from voices, while men show the opposite trend.

Surprisingly, however, the impact of gender on reading body language is largely unknown. In a study carried out in the early 1980s, the superiority of women in reading it was pointed out, but there is not much more literature on the matter, as there is with other aspects of nonverbal communication.

The article tries to fill the gap and clarify whether the gender of the perceiver affects the recognition of emotional expressions conveyed by the actions of others and, if so, how it does. More specifically, authors ask whether gender affects the recognition of emotions represented by body movement, or, in other words, whether females excel at recognizing emotional actions.

To this end, authors gathered 34 healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 36 who were enrolled in the study.

Authors used light dot screens depicting a person knocking on the door with different emotional expressions (happy, neutral, or angry) and showed this to the subjects. They had to infer which was the emotion of the person in that moment.

The light spot technique was used because it helps to isolate the information revealed by the appearance of other signals. The perceivers saw only a few bright spots placed on the joints of an arm, that, otherwise, would be completely invisible.

The results yielded interesting information. It seems that the effect of gender would be related to the emotional content of the actions.

Women tend to excel at recognizing angry actions, while men excel at recognizing the happy ones.

Additionally, females outperform males in recognizing emotionally neutral hits.

Women have been socially associated with a high sensitivity to emotional cues and subtle details; the reverse occurring with men, who may have a better performance in recognizing negative threatening expressions.

These assumptions are based on the different evolutionary and sociocultural roles of both genders.

The data is consistent with findings showing that men appear to exhibit stronger brain activation in response to positive images (depicting landscapes, sports activities, families, or erotic scenes) than women.

Finally, women have an advantage in recognizing neutral movements. It suggests that they are better attuned to the lack of emotional content in bodily actions.

Authors point out that future research should be directed at uncovering sex differences in brain activity during body language reading. Such research would also shed light on sex differences in neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by deficits in social cognition, such as autism spectrum disorders, depression, or schizophrenia.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog. 


Effective communication goes beyond words—it’s in behavior. With the Master in Nonverbal Behavior, you will learn to interpret gestures and micro-expressions that reveal what is left unsaid. The program is 100% online, giving you the freedom to study from wherever you prefer. You will also earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States that guarantees internationally recognized, high-quality education. Study from just $208 USD per month.

NonVerbal Communication Blog