Communicating with no sound..an experiment

This weekend I sat down to watch an episode of a reality show I don't regularly watch, Survivor. While I've seen this show before, I haven't been keeping up this time around.

Reality television is a great chance to look at communication with the sound on AND with the sound off. I think that the fact that the "actors" are not supposed to be acting gave way to some very interesting communication notes.

First, with the sound off, I noticed a lot of the characters' body language. Many times when they were communicating in groups I saw their arms crossed across their body, which could mean that they were not listening, or feeling uncomfortable with what was being communicated with them. At one point in the show I noticed that two tribe mates were talking to each other and both were being active listeners, with eye contact and one was nodding in agreement, I also noticed that they were expressively using their hands in what appeared to be a serious conversation.  When another person walked up on this conversation the two original people changed their body language, and it seemed that the tone of the conversation changed--I could tell this by their body language and facial expression.

Now, it was time to turn the sound on! Surprisingly, I was pretty on target with what was happening in the situations that I watched. Specifically when the two people were talking, they were having serious game play talk alone, when the third approached they began joking and laughing about something completely unrelated to their game.

It's interesting to me how big of a part the non verbal aspects of communication are. Body language, facial expression, eye contact are all things that can really affect your communication skills.