by Anne Sanders

Created on: February 22, 2010

Psychologists studying nonverbal communication have said for years that the majority of communication is nonverbal, from 55 percent to 93 percent. Having lived and travelled around the world, I have found that accepted gestures and body language definitely vary from country to country, sometimes in extreme ways. How easy it is to assume that your way of acting and thinking are the norm when in reality it is one of many different cultural norms. Some of the most common gestures and social mores you utilize will have a totally different meaning in another country.

Eye Contact and Personal Space: Up Close but not Personal

I first became aware of these cultural differences when I was living in Japan and found that people often did not meet my eyes even when I was talking directly to them. Years later in Paris, France, I found people trying to get my attention by staring at me and directing my eyes to theirs. I had found that the use of eye contact to gauge acceptance by another person was not the same across cultures. Where we in America expect eye contact when speaking to someone, the Japanese and the Chinese judge constant eye contact with others as intrusive and showing a lack of respect, and the French feel more open to eyeing people they don’t even know.

On the other hand, the concept of personal space is the opposite in the case of the Japanese and Americans. Americans expect a much bigger “bubble” of personal space between people than the Japanese, who are used to sharing smaller spaces with many people.  So if a Japanese person comes close to an American to speak but does not look him in the eye, the American will probably be confused as to the mixed signals he’s getting in sharing personal space but not eye contact.

Gestures: I Can’t Understand What You Are Seeing

Another interesting area of body language is gestures. They can mean very different things in different cultures. For instance, putting your forefinger and thumb together in the shape of an “O” with the rest of your fingers pointing upwards is a sign things are good or perfect to an American and is usually accompanied by a smile. It is a symbol for money to the Japanese. But for the Greeks, it refers to a body part and is extremely rude.

Something as simple to us as nodding a head up and down for “yes” would seem to cause no problem in most of the world, until you learn that the same gesture means “no” in Bulgaria. To actually

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