The vertical dimension of interpersonal relations (relating to dominance, power, and status) was examined in association with nonverbal behaviors that included facial behavior, gaze, interpersonal distance, body movement, touch, vocal behaviors, posed encoding skill, and others. Results were separately summarized for people's beliefs (perceptions) about the relation of verticality to nonverbal behavior and for actual relations between verticality and nonverbal behavior. Beliefs/perceptions were stronger and much more prevalent than were actual verticality effects. Perceived and actual relations were positively correlated across behaviors. Heterogeneity was great, suggesting that verticality is not a psychologically uniform construct in regard to nonverbal behavior. Finally, comparison of the verticality effects to those that have been documented for gender in relation to nonverbal behavior revealed only a limited degree of parallelism.

Proceeding from a model of feature-positive goal monitoring, two studies tested hypothesized associations between approach goals and positive self-evaluations and between avoidance goals and negative self-evaluations. The existence of feature-positive searches in goal monitoring was expected to bias self-evaluations toward perceiving success for approach goals and failure for avoidance goals. Study 1 established the existence of a relationship between goal framing and global self-evaluations, or psychological well being, subjects with more avoidance goals evaluated themselves more negatively on measures of self-steem, optimism, and depression. Study 2 confirmed the causal role of goal framing in this relationship, for self perceptions of success and satisfaction differed as a function of manipulated approach versus avoidance goals.

No abstract

Previous attempts to find the theoretically predicted association between nonverbal communication skills and social status have been inconsistent, especially among adults. It was hypothesized that these inconsistencies were produced by a failure of earlier research to differentiate the two genders and different emotions. Hypothesizing that various emotions may be differentially important in male and female friendships, the current study investigated the ability of 146 men and women to nonverbally communicate (encode) three emotions. Results showed that women are better able to encode happiness and that men are better able to encode anger. Additionally, ability to encode happiness is correlated with the sociometric status of women, whereas ability to encode anger is correlated with the sociometric status of men. Together, these results suggest that happiness and anger play different roles in the social lives of men and women.

No abstract