Blogg Nine: Why Did I Get Married? - Noller & Feeny

Watching Why Did I Get Married? this week in class has forced me into a greater consideration of communication in the context of marriage. The couples in the movie display very different nonverbal behavior when they are talking to each other, and often a miscommunication occurs.

I found a study conducted by Noller & Feeny (1994) that explored nonverbal accuracy in newlywed couples up to two years. The partners were asked to send ambiguous messages that could have a neutral, negative, or positive meaning, depending on the nonverbal communication that accompanied it. The study found that nonverbal accuracy increased over time between the husband and the wife in each marriage. Additionally, accuracy was greater for wife-to-husband communication than for husband-to-wife communication. I found these two conclusions interesting. The more time a couple has been married, the better they should be at encoding and decoding the other’s message. I suppose I have found this to be true when I think about the married couples I know. My grandparents can practically read each other’s minds; my friend who got married less than a year ago sometimes has difficulties communicating to her husband and also reading his nonverbal behaviors. I was also struck by the second conclusion that communication is best when the female is encoding the message and the male is decoding. I think females are perhaps more aware of their communication, and perhaps their husband’s ability to read them. They take greater care in bringing optimum clarity to the message, so the males have a better chance of understanding. Perhaps the reasons males find it more difficult on the encoding end might include the limited range of their voice or their overall limited display of emotion. In any case, I was fascinated by the method and results of this study.

Blogg Eight: Female-Male Relationships - She's the Man

I actually don’t absolutely love this movie, but for the sake of this blogg I’m going to use it. In this clip of She’s the Man, Amanda Bynes’ character, Violet, is learning how to act like guy – she’s pretending to be her brother at a new school so she can play soccer. Watch the video and look for the stereotypical ‘dude’ things that she has to learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_9aGm7PrRc

There are many differences when it comes to the way males and females communicate nonverbally, and Violet has to examine each one in order to successfully pull off this identity swap. First she starts with appearance, asking her friend to help disguise her femininity with a wig and facial hair.

Then she moves to gesture and movement, following men on the sidewalk attempting to mimic each one’s walk. It’s pretty obvious that men and women have distinct gaits. In fact, some research has shown that “people are astonishingly accurate when asked to judge the gender of walking human figures, even when they are represented by 15 small dots of light attached to major joints of the body.” The Salk Institute for Biological Studies say humans have certain neurons in the brain that detect feminine gaits and male gaits. Whether or not this is true, like I said, men and women walk and move differently for whatever reason, and Violet knows she has to walk like a guy in order to be accepted by the guys at her new school. Anyway, Violet practices her more masculine behaviors and sets out for Illyria. After convincing her mother that she is going to learn how to become the perfect debutant, Violet arrives to school as Sebastian. Her mother is excited that Violet is finally going to be a “lady,” which to her means dresses, make-up, smiles, manners, philanthropy, and gushy emotions.

At Illyria, Violet practices her voice, making it deeper. A man’s masculinity can be questioned if his voice is too high, so Violet needs to speak much lower than what is normal for her. Our society responds negatively to a male who has a feminine-sounding voice because a deeper voice is the norm. If Violet wants to be a typical guy, she has to have a typical guy voice. The voice adaptation is a constant struggle for Violet throughout the movie, because she often forgets or gets carried away in a situation and her feminine voice is revealed.

After showing off her voice, she struts and spits in typical male fashion. Throughout the movie, she realizes more nuances of behavior that she must change to fit in socially with her male roommates and friends. She gains new insights on male-female relationships as she is involved now on both sides. This is quite advantageous in the end.

This entire movie plays on male-female stereotypes, and is therefore pretty entertaining. Although many cases are the extreme, it is interesting to investigate the behaviors of men and women and attempt to discover the origins of such stereotypes.