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.