A.J.

Starr

U4 Essay 2

Nonverbal Communication

Through my observation of people having non-verbal communication as I walk through

the halls of West High School I have seen many interesting things regarding high school flirting,

high school relationships, and friendships is general. These observations have allowed me to

make deductions regarding the nature of relationships how we flirt with one another and the

psychology of the human mind and how it is altered in social situations especially around those

of the opposite sex. (Obviously Im referring to men doing stupid things around women.) Bryan

Strong and Theodore Cohen in their book The marriage and family experience state When we

communicate face-to-face, the messages we send and receive contain both a verbal and a non-

verbal component. Verbal communication expresses the basic content of the message, whereas

nonverbal communication reflects more of the relationship part of the message. The relationship

part conveys the feelings and attitudes of the speaker and indicates how the words are to be

interpreted. These underlying meanings in non-verbal messages help us understand social

graces in certain situations and see in ourselves how to better and more consistently convey our

messages.

Some of the behavior I have observed include some strange poses especially in the

women as they do what I believe to be flirting. This pose is called a contrapposto pose in which

most of the weight is placed on one leg and the body slumps into an S-curve like position. Some

other behaviors that deviate from the norm in these situations include exaggerated behaviors

such as laughing with the head thrown back and a hair flip, this is then followed by playful
physical contact such as the girl punching the guy lightly on the arm and the guy responding with

either an exaggerated reaction to the contact or with contact of his own. Some of the differences

in male behavior and female behavior include things such as the female allowing the male to feel

confident with these exaggerated movements and then when the male feels confident he makes

his move. This was the females all along and we can observe that the male has been played by

the female as he now is physically attracted to her. This results in more physical contact and if a

relationship ensues, well then it gets gushy.

Behaviors in relationships in high school highly differ from that of singles. High school

relationships include two parties who are highly comfortable around one another and this results

in lots of physical touching including hand holding, kissing, and some PDA I would rather not

see. These behaviors began when the courting process allowed these two individuals to become

comfortable around one another and then the hormones take over. High school halls are filled

with clouds of hormones, these hormones are the phenomena that leads to PDA, high school

relationships, and creates the mating ground of the high school hallway. These interesting

observations have led me to conclude that high school is a dirty rotten place filled with people

who need to cool their hormones.

Citation:

Strong, B, & Cohen, T. F. (2014). The marriage and family experience: Intimate relationships in

a changing society (12th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.