Oculesics

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about oculesics and understand how that relates to different cultures and communication.

The term oculesics, you may or may not be familiar with. It's a term that I wasn't familiar with at first. But basically, it's just eye contact. And it is eye contact or eye movement.

And this is a communication style that we utilize in our everyday lives, whether or not we notice it. And it's also considered a non-verbal communication style.

So looking at oculesics from a cross-cultural context, we need to know that each culture differs in how they view oculesics and what is the appropriate use of eye contact as a form of communication. And eye contact has a different meaning depending upon the culture that we are communicating with.

So in one culture, eye contact could be really impolite or dismissive. While in the other culture, it may be seen as challenging or insulting, even. So we need to be aware that when we are communicating with another culture, that eye contact can have an entirely different meaning from our own culture's meaning.

And in oculesics, reactions to their different uses are instantaneous and even emotional at times. And this is because we interpret eye contact or the use of oculesics through our own culture.

So when somebody is communicating with us and maybe they're from a different culture, we are using their eye movement and eye contact from our own perspective, unless we are trained otherwise or have experience in that other culture's communication styles. So it's really important to be aware that we do interpret these non-verbal communication cues from our own perspective and culture.

Now let's talk about assumptions and how we need to be aware of this in terms of cross-cultural communication and using eye contact appropriately. So when we make assumptions about different uses of eye contact, so what when we make assumptions about what's appropriate and what's not appropriate use of eye contact, we can send or it can have unintended meanings.

So for example, direct eye contact versus indirect eye contact. Two people from two different cultures are both making assumptions on one another because they don't have any training or experience in either person's culture. So the person that is used to direct eye contact as part of their non-verbal communication in their culture, they may view the person that is using indirect eye contact as untrustworthy or uncertain.

And on the other side, the person that uses indirect eye contact, and that's a part of their cultural communication styles, maybe the person that is giving them direct eye contact as being challenging or even having a romantic interest when really that is the case for neither of the parties. They are just making assumptions based upon their own perspective and from their own cultural viewpoint, rather than asking or getting some training or experience to really understand the non-verbal oculesic communication style of the other party.

Well, now that we've covered oculesics, let's look at our key points. So oculesics is eye contact. And it's the communication style where we are utilizing eye contact or eye movement, and it also is a non-verbal communication style. So it's communicating without having to verbalize.

And when we make assumptions about meanings of oculesics or eye contact from a person that is not of our culture, so we are assuming what eye contact means for the other person means the same thing for us, we can run into some unintended meanings. So for example, the meanings of the direct versus indirect eye contact where they could be viewed as untrustworthy on one side, or maybe even possibly having a romantic interest when that's not what they were intending to mean at all.

We also need to be aware that each culture differs in the level of appropriateness of eye contact and the meaning of eye contact and eye movement. And so we need to make sure that we get some training or experience so when we're having communication with a person from another culture that we aren't familiar with, we don't offend them. And we really try and communicate with them appropriately and effectively.

Here's your one term before we go on-- oculesics. Thank you so much for taking the time out. I hope that you've learned something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.