Seinfeld and Nonverbal Communication

Everyone knows the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. But how often do we actually form impressions about other people just by looking solely at their facial expressions and appearance? (I would be lying if I said I didn’t). We all make inferences about people as soon as meeting them. This is why nonverbal communication skills are important in our understanding of social perception.

 In one of the most popular television sitcoms of the 90’s, Seinfeld, we meet Elaine’s new boyfriend, Aaron, in the episode entitled Raincoats. In this episode, Elaine and Aaron go to meet Jerry and his parents. Jerry warns his parents about Aaron and refers to him as “The Close Talker”. His mom asks Jerry why Aaron is referred to as this name, and Jerry explains that she’ll see as soon as the couple arrives. Whenever Elaine and Aaron arrive, immediately Aaron starts talking extremely close to Mrs. Seinfeld’s face, and by judging her body language she appears uncomfortable. It is clear that Aaron’s nickname as “The Close Talker” proves to be accurate. The Seinfeld’s deduce that Aaron has no sense of other people’s personal and intimate space. The characters clearly are intuitive and understand what nonverbal communication cues say about a person’s personality.

In an experiment titled “Can nonverbal communication skills be taught” the researchers wanted to develop a program for teaching NVC, nonverbal communication skills, to medical students, and to determine whether it would improve student’s awareness and performance of NVC. In the study, a total of 106 medical students were randomly assigned to 14 groups for a communication skills training session before an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). The OSCE teaches patient-doctor communication skills to the students. There were five faculty members who served as session facilitators. Following the training, students wrote their goals for the OSCE medical interview, which were analyzed after. The student’s performance of the NVC was evaluated based on the video recording of the OSCE. The results proved that students in the NVC group were more likely to write goals related to NVC, but there were no significant differences found in the NVC evaluations at the OSCE. Although the training increased the student’s awareness of the NVC, it did not change their performance. Additional training is needed to determine whether more training would actually improve their NVC performance. Although there were no differences in the NVC evaluations at the OSCE, Nonverbal communication skills are crucial to a physician’s ability to form relationships and communicate their emotions to patients. Not only are NVC skills important to physicians, but they are important to everyone in helping form impressions about people. 
Submitted by Gina DeFloria
Reference:

 Ishikawa, H., Hashimoto, H., Kinoshita, M., & Yano, E. (n.d.). Can nonverbal communication skills be taught? Med Teach Medical Teacher, 860-863. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01421591003728211