Non-Verbal Communication

  New Girl

The TV show that I choose to watch was New Girl on Fox.  I had only seen the commercials for this show because it is fairly new so I new that it had some dry humor to it.  I watched the Halloween episode without the sound and it appeared that all the characters were friends of some form. The reason I thought they were friends was because they communicated in a way that seemed like they were comfortable with each other.  They smiled a lot and laughed.  They also seemed to be joking around with each other in their conversation.  It also appeared that some of them were a bit closer friends because of the hugging, kissing and they way they looked into each other's eyes.  

Non-Verbal behavior that I observed:

  In this scene seemed she appears to be longing for him and before she sat down they had hugged and he gave her a kiss so it looks to me that he likes her.  Through the whole episode it appeared that they were a love interest to each other.

 The red head and the guy were attracted to each other but it seemed that they were trying to hard and were not as comfortable with each other.  Their non-verbal communication was not saying that they were as attracted to each other but they were attempting to see if they could be.

 These two were communicating as friends at the beginning of the episode but toward the middle of the episode they were communicating in a way that made me think that they were angry with each other or had a disagreement.  It all seemed to revolve around another girl that seemed to enjoy being with the guy dressed as the ninja turtle and she got annoyed when the other gut was around them. 

 When I watched the show with the sound on I realized that she had more feelings for him than he had for her and since he was not able to commit to dating just her that in the end she asked him to leave and he did.  They were just having fun together and she ended up falling for him.  I would not have guessed this unless I had heard their conversations so with out the sound I had assumed they were a couple and with the sound I realized that they were not.

 After hearing their conversations I realized that the guy with the top hat was a little jealous of the ninja turtle guy because he had the beautiful girlfriend and he thought that she should have been with him because the other guy was not as charming as he thought he was.  In the end they agreed that she choose who she wanted to spend time with and that he needed to respect that if they were to remain friends so they agreed to be friends.

The guy with the girl with the red hair realized that he was attracted to the idea of her and how she looked and not actually attracted to who she was as a person. In the end they agreed to part ways.

I think that if I had been watching the show on a regular basis I would know the characters a little better and I would probably have been able to decipher a little better what they were feeling or trying to communicate by their facial expressions and body language.

I learned that non-verbal communication can come across in a way that is easily misinterpreted.  I assumed some things that were not true based on the facial expressions and body language that I observed.  I realized that language is important but how well we know the person that we are communicating with is also important because we will be able to translate their non-verbal communication better.