This Handbook provides an up-to-date discussion of the central issues in nonverbal communication and examines the research that informs these issues. Editors Valerie Manusov and Miles Patterson bring together preeminent scholars, from a range of disciplines, to reveal the strength of nonverbal behavior as an integral part of communication.
Chapter 12: Culture and Nonverbal Behavior
Culture and Nonverbal Behavior
Over the history of time, people have had to solve a host of distinct social problems in order to adapt and thus achieve reproductive success, including negotiating complex status hierarchies, forming successful work and social groups, attracting mates, fighting off potential rivals of food and sexual partners, giving birth and raising children, and battling nature (Buss, 1991, 2001). Universal biological imperatives are associated with a universal set of psychological problems that people need to solve in order to survive; thus, all individuals and groups of individuals must create ways to deal with these universal problems. The ways that each group develops then become their culture.
In my view, culture is the product of the interaction between universal biological ...