Title: A study of non-verbal immediacy behaviour from the perspective of Indian cultural context, gender and experience

Authors: Reeta Raina; Asif Zameer

Addresses: FORE School of Management, Qutub Institutional Area, New-Delhi, India ' FORE School of Management, Qutub Institutional Area, New-Delhi, India

Abstract: The present study explores the influence of culture, gender and experience on the non-verbal communication behaviour in an Indian context. The results indicate that Indians often use more multimodal style of communication - primarily non-verbal methods to relay information in conversations using eye movement, spacing, facial expressions, tone of voice, and other non-verbal cues. Generally, they are seen as high on non-verbal immediacy behaviour, but, at times, they do reveal, some kind of withdrawal symptoms like leaning away from the person or their bodies become tense - they would avoid gesturing and not look directly at the person. The Indian women, when compared with men in India, tend to be more emotive, they smile considerably more, maintain eye contact more and gesture more where as men use more expansive gestures. The study did not show major difference in the non-verbal behaviour of people with experience and non-experience background.

Keywords: non-verbal communication; high-context culture; proxemics; gender; eye contact; high power distancing; India; immediacy behaviour; cultural context; experience; eye movement; spacing; facial expressions; tone of voice.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2016.077635

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2016 Vol.13 No.1, pp.35 - 56

Received: 22 Apr 2015
Accepted: 02 Jun 2015
Published online: 07 Jul 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article