| |
Max Weisbuch
Post-doctoral Fellow
Tufts University
Psychology Department
490 Boston Ave.
Medford, MA 02155
617.627.3174 |
About me
My research is focused on nonverbal communication. In particular
I am interested in nonverbal communication (a) for its role in
socialization and social influence, (b) for its potential as an
implicit measure, and (c) for its ubiquity in creating cognitive
states of readiness.
Although verbal (word-based) social influence and socialization
surely contribute to the evolution of culturally-shared attitudes,
beliefs, and ideals, it seems likely that nonverbal communication
also plays a role. For example, in one research program, my
colleagues and I are investigating the influence of nonverbal bias.
Specifically, if one social category (e.g., slim women) elicits more
positive nonverbal responses than others (e.g., heavy women),
repeated observation of this nonverbal bias may create particular
attitudes toward those social categories (e.g., positive attitudes
toward slim women) and contribute to shared ideals (e.g., females
wanting a slim body). This model of nonverbal bias can be applied to
understanding how cultures form attitudes toward social categories,
products, behaviors, or settings.
Although others' nonverbal behavior can cause observers to come to
certain conclusions (e.g., Jerry likes Susan) those conclusions are
not necessarily valid. In a second line of research, my colleagues
and I are examining if, when, and why nonverbal behavior is likely
to reveal meaningful psychological processes. Recently, for example,
we have observed that physiological threat is best revealed by
considering both vocal qualities (e.g., vocal tone) and facial
expressions together. Threatened individuals communicated a lack of
confidence in their voice but a high level of confidence in their
face-- this pattern was a better marker of threat than either
channel alone. We are currently examining the contributions of
different nonverbal channels to revealing attitudes, personality
traits, and future behavior. We can also use nonverbal decoding
ability as an implicit measure. For example, my colleagues and I
observed that facial emotion decoding was reliable at both 50 and
2000 milliseconds-- however, the people who were best at 50
milliseconds were different from those who were best at 2000
milliseconds. We are currently conducting experiments on
brain-disordered populations to understand the function of both
types of decoding ability.
Finally, the efficiency of nonverbal decoding makes a likely source
of "priming." That is, nonverbal behavior is ubiquitous in social
life. If cognitive resources are not required for nonverbal behavior
to activate cognitive representations, then it seems likely that
others' nonverbal behaviors are a ubiquitous source of concept
accessibility. My colleagues and I are currently comparing
differences between verbal and nonverbal priming.
|
