Chapter 18 Exercises

Exercise 18.1 — The Baseline Problem (Individual Reflection)

One of this chapter's core arguments is that nonverbal signals can only be accurately interpreted against an individual's behavioral baseline. Before you can know whether someone is smiling more than usual, touching their hair more than usual, or standing closer than usual, you need to know what their "usual" looks like.

Task: For the next three days, pay close attention to the nonverbal behavior of two people you see regularly and know moderately well — a classmate, a coworker, a roommate. Do NOT tell them what you are doing. Record observations in a journal:

  • What is their typical eye contact duration in conversation?
  • Do they naturally use a lot of gesture, or are they relatively still?
  • What is their default interpersonal distance? Does it vary by person or context?
  • What does their face typically look like when listening? Engaged? Neutral?

After three days, write a 400-word reflection on what you noticed. Did knowing someone's baseline change how you interpreted any specific behavior? Did you notice anything you had previously missed?

Exercise 18.2 — Channel Isolation (Paired Activity)

Setup: Work with a partner (can be a classmate or friend). The exercise has two rounds of three minutes each.

Round 1: Have a conversation about any topic — but one of you must keep your arms crossed throughout. Afterward, each person writes down: How did that posture affect how you felt during the conversation? How did you perceive the other person?

Round 2: Have a different conversation in which both of you deliberately try to match each other's sitting posture and body orientation. Again, afterward write your impressions.

Discussion questions (individually, 300 words): - Did the crossed arms feel meaningful, or did it feel arbitrary? How did context affect this? - Did the mirroring feel natural or forced? Was there a moment when it tipped from rapport-building into awkwardness? - What does this exercise tell you about the limits of posture-based body language interpretation?

Exercise 18.3 — Decoding a Filmed Interaction (Analysis)

Find a scene from a film or television series that involves a first meeting or early courtship interaction. Avoid scenes that are explicitly narrated or where characters discuss their feelings aloud — choose a scene where you are working primarily from nonverbal cues.

Watch the scene three times:

  1. First watch: Note your immediate, intuitive impressions. Who seems interested? Who seems nervous? What gives you that impression?

  2. Second watch: Mute the audio entirely. Now catalog the nonverbal signals channel by channel: eye contact patterns, proximity changes, touch (if any), postural shifts, facial expressions, grooming behaviors.

  3. Third watch: Audio only — listen to vocal prosody without watching the visual. What do you learn from tone, pace, pitch, and breathiness that you missed before?

Write a 500-word analysis discussing: How much did each channel contribute to your interpretation? Were there any contradictions between channels? Did your interpretation change between watches? What does this exercise reveal about how nonverbal communication actually works?

Exercise 18.4 — Body Language Book Audit (Critical Analysis)

Find one popular body language book — you can use the library, a bookstore, or a brief online review — and identify three specific claims the book makes about how to interpret a particular behavior.

For each claim, do the following: 1. State the claim clearly 2. Identify what evidence (if any) the author provides 3. Generate at least two alternative explanations for the behavior that the author does not consider 4. Rate the claim on a scale of 1–5 for plausibility based on what you learned in this chapter

Write a 400-word critical evaluation of one of the three claims, addressing: What makes this claim appealing? What would you need to see in a controlled study to genuinely test it? What does its persistence in popular culture tell you about how people think about nonverbal communication?

Exercise 18.5 — The Voice-Only Experiment (Group Discussion)

Call or voice-chat (audio only — no video) with someone you know. Have a ten-minute conversation about something moderately meaningful but not emotionally charged.

Afterward, pay attention to the following and bring your observations to class discussion:

  • Did you communicate differently when you could not see the other person's face and body?
  • Did you rely more heavily on prosodic cues (tone, pace, emphasis) to interpret their meaning?
  • Did you check for understanding more often (asking "does that make sense?" or "you know what I mean?") when visual channels were unavailable?
  • What does this tell you about how much we normally rely on visual nonverbal channels without realizing it?

Be prepared to discuss: How does digital/remote communication change nonverbal dynamics? What is lost? What (if anything) is gained?