4/5-week 3

Lucy discusses her relationship with her four sisters and how it has changed through interpersonal communication. She mentions the Jahari window and the four selves within it. She then focuses on nonverbal communication and its importance in everyday conversation. She shares that nonverbal communication makes up 55% of communication, according to researcher Albert Morabian. She discusses how nonverbal cues play a significant role in her relationship with her sisters, as they can understand her thoughts and feelings without her even saying anything. She explores the similarities in nonverbal communication between siblings and how it is influenced by their shared experiences. Lucy concludes that siblings have a unique understanding of each other's nonverbal cues, regardless of the distance in their relationship. She expresses her appreciation for her siblings and the strong bond they share. Hi, this is Lucy, and this is week three of looking at my relationship between myself and my four sisters and how that's changed and grown through the lens of interpersonal communication. So just to do a little recap, last week we talked about the Jahari window and the four selves within that, the open self, blind self, hidden self, and unknown self. And basically those four selves within the Jahari window can either grow or shrink depending on the relationship status. And what I noticed from that study was that when I was closer to a sibling, my open self grew and my blind and hidden self shrank and my unknown self stayed the same. And if I got less close to them over time, then the inverse of that would happen. And this week, there's aspects of the Jahari window that are going to tie into today's episode, but we'll get to that later. This week, the focus of this episode is going to be on nonverbal communication. So to start off, what is nonverbal communication? The book Interpersonal Communication by Joseph DeFito defines it really simply just by saying that it's a way of communicating without words, which is pretty straightforward, but it gets a lot more complicated the more that you look into it. One of the first things that I was really surprised by when looking into nonverbal communication is just how important it is in just everyday conversation. And I realized how much it influences daily communication when reading an article in the University of Texas, Perman Basin called How Much of Communication is Nonverbal? And in that, it said how Albert Morabian, who was a researcher of body language, he was the first person to debunk the idea that nonverbal communication was 90% of communication. And instead, he said that it was 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal and 7% words only. And I just found this really interesting because I didn't even know that it was originally thought that nonverbal communication took up 90% of it. That just seems so insane because even like 55% nonverbal, I just still think that that's over half. Like I just never knew that it had that much of a role in communication. But when I got to thinking about it, I could realize how much sense that actually made because when looking at my relationship with not only my sisters, but the people around me, I could see how so much of our communication is done through body language, eye contact and all these things. And in the book, Interpersonal Communication, it went into all the other aspects of nonverbal communication being smiles and body appearance and facial management, facial feedback, body gestures like emblems and illustrators and effect displays and just all these different components of it. And it opened my eyes so much to how much nonverbal communication has to do with everyday interactions, especially between siblings. And why it made me think of my sisters in this was because I realized that while close relationships like my roommates, for example, they can so easily pick up on my nonverbal communication. They can so easily tell what it is that I'm thinking or feeling through the way that I look at them when someone says something funny or the way that I respond if I'm tired. They can so easily pick up on whatever it is I'm thinking or feeling and trying to convey without me even saying it. And while I see that so much with those friendships, I see it even stronger when thinking about my relationship with my siblings. It reminded me of how while my roommate can so easily pick up on my nonverbal cues, my sisters can pick it up even easier to the extent that they can tell what I'm thinking before I even realize that I'm thinking it. And this reminded me of what I mentioned last week about the Johari window and how one of the selves within that window is the blind self. And if you don't remember, the blind self was things that others know about you that you may not know. And that I felt tied into today's episode because so much of the time my sisters will come into a room and see the look on my face and immediately be able to tell that I'm in a mood without me even having to realize that I was in a mood. And they'll come in and they'll look at me and say, Oh my gosh, Lucy, what's wrong? Are you okay? Blah blah blah. I won't even have noticed that I was in a bad mood until I think about it. And I'm like, yeah, actually I was kind of hurt by this before or something. And I just found that really interesting. So I did some research on nonverbal communication between siblings and if that looks different than it does between other relationships, like friendships or otherwise. And according to SpringerLeak, there was a journal published called Sibling Resemblances and Nonverbal Skills and Style by Peter Blank, Myron Zuckerman, Bella DePaolo, and Robert Rosenthal. And they did this experiment between siblings and found that when it comes to the way that they communicate through their eyes, through their tone and voice and their body cues, it was found that siblings show resemblance in the way that they decode nonverbal things. So with that, they also tend to express nonverbal communication in similar ways. And I found that really interesting because it makes sense that those who you spend the most time with would have the most in common with you. And I found it interesting how it even comes into play with things that are nonverbal in communication. So after realizing this and that siblings have a different level of understanding when it comes to nonverbal communication, it really made me think about how different me and my four siblings are. And while we're so different, we still have so much understanding between us just because we've grown up in the same household and experienced so much of the same things being siblings. And it also made me think about the friendships around me and how while those change and that change can influence the way that we understand one another's nonverbal cues, my siblings, even though those relationships change as well, it never really affects the way that we understand each other's nonverbal cues. Because if a friendship that I have kind of can grow distant, it affects the way that I can interpret their nonverbal cues and maybe I won't do it as accurately as I would when we were close. Whereas siblings, no matter the closeness of our relationship, whether we're close at that time or a little bit more distant at that time, it's never affected the way that I understand their nonverbal cues in the way that I can read their mood and tell what they're thinking or feeling or trying to express to me because I just know them so deeply and so well and for so long. So there was honestly a lot that I got from that. But one of the biggest things was just getting a new appreciation for my siblings and my relationship with them just because I realized that no other friendship could ever really emulate that bond that we have, that relationship that's so strong that it even affects the way that we communicate nonverbally. And even though the five of us are just so different in so many ways and just personality-wise couldn't be more on separate ends of the spectrum, it's cool to see how we're still so connected just because we're all still sisters at the end of the day. So in conclusion, what I got from this study was that siblings have a special understanding of one another's nonverbal cues to an extent that no matter the relationship's distance or closeness, there's always going to be that understanding that can't really be attained through any other friendship. So that is everything that I have for this episode, but if you have any questions or any comments or anything like that, you can leave it in the chat box on my website and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. But that's all I have for this week, I'll be back next week, and thank you so much for listening.