Non-Conscious Routes to Building Culture Nonverbal Components of Socialization

Gesture and elaborate forms of nonverbal behaviour have been posited as necessary antecedents to language and shared conceptual understanding. Here we argue that subtle and largely unintentional nonverbal behaviours play a key role in building consensual beliefs within culture. Specifically, people extract a great deal of information from even brief exposure to subtle nonverbal behaviour and much, if not most, human communication occurs nonverbally. We propose a model that focuses on the subtle and automatic nonverbal transmission of attitudes, beliefs and cultural ideals. Specifically, people extract attitudes and beliefs from nonverbal behaviour — such extraction is both ubiquitous and efficient. The extracted attitudes and beliefs become individual beliefs if encountered frequently enough. Consequently, people may come to adopt the same attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in the absence of verbal communication. Finally, one’s own nonverbal behaviour reflects the extracted attitudes, beliefs and ideals of those of one’s group, serving as a means for transmitting culture. The implication is that subtle nonverbal behaviour is important for the creation and maintenance of culture. How do we form conscious beliefs that just happen to be similar to those of our neighbours? Some argue that geographical considerations, such as warmer temperatures or rough terrain, lay the cognitive foundation for all types of beliefs and behaviour (Nisbett and Cohen, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, No. 10–11, 2008, pp. ??–?? Correspondence: [email protected] [email protected] 1996; see Heine and Norenzayan, 2006). Others argue that people are motivated to achieve a ‘shared reality’ in order to achieve the social cohesion and cognitive certainty that facilitate human survival (e.g. Hardin and Higgins, 1996). One general approach to the phenomenon of shared consciousness has been the social psychological model of social influence. According to this perspective, shared beliefs emerge largely as a consequence of social influence — the purposeful or incidental transmission of belief from one person to another. Considered broadly, social influence is responsible for shared beliefs ranging from stereotypes (e.g. ‘Asian people are smart’) to attitudes (e.g. ‘smoking is bad’) to ideologies (e.g. Christianity). Hence, for the development of culture to be understood social influence must also be understood. We argue here that a blind eye has been turned to processes that may account for much or most social influence — nonverbal processes. Moving beyond arguments about the primacy of gesture to language (cf. Durkheim, 1895; see also Knight, this issue), we note the social influence of more subtle nonverbal behaviours such as facial expressions, prosody and body language. In particular, we argue that these actions are ubiquitous and irrepressible and that people spontaneously, efficiently and often without awareness attribute meaning to subtle nonverbal behaviours. Such meaning influences one’s own conscious beliefs and, to the extent that people are exposed to similar nonverbal behaviour patterns, the shared consciousness that characterizes culture. Social Influence: A Brief Overview Culture is defined in part by consensually-held beliefs. Although few beliefs are completely consensual (or ‘shared’) in any one culture, there must be some degree of consensus for culture to exist. Anthropologists and philosophers have long speculated about the role of various processes in the development of shared beliefs whereas sociologists have begun to explore the macro-level processes responsible for such development. For example, there now exist many sociological ‘network’ models detailing patterns of connectivity between persons that may account for shared beliefs (see Mason, Conrey and Smith, 2007). In contrast, psychologists have devoted considerable energy to experimental research on the micro-level processes responsible for shared beliefs. Specifically, empirical (largely experimental) social influence research has examined the cognitive, affective and behavioural processes involved in persuasion and conformity. For example, the ‘informational’ and ‘normative’ functions of conformity 2 M. WEISBUCH & N. AMBADY