Social attraction in video-mediated communication: The role of nonverbal affiliative behavior

VMC versus FTF communication

VMC interactions closely mimic FTF interactions and function in much the same way (e.g., Fullwood, 2007). The addition of both a visual and an audio channel offers more possibilities compared to leaner CMC channels regarding the transmission of nonverbal cues, such as smiles, pitch variation, and vocal intensity. However, two important differences remain. First, in VMC, communicators are not physically copresent. When people are copresent, they can use the full range of linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonverbal cues to communicate (van der Kleij et al., 2009). Physical copresence influences the transmission of nonverbal immediacy behaviors, such as touch, body orientation, and body lean (Mehrabian, 1969), that create psychological closeness between people in initial interactions. Nonverbal immediacy behaviors are believed to communicate interest and warmth between communicators which may be easier to achieve FTF. Moreover, being physically copresent makes it easier to communicate information to one another and interpret the communication of the other person (Fullwood, 2007). Additionally, VMC technologies are believed to weaken the transmission of social context cues, such as features of the physical environment, available in FTF communication (van der Kleij et al., 2009).

Second, although VMC resembles FTF communication in terms of the number of cues that can be transmitted, the medium imposes technical constraints due to limited bandwidth. In VMC, a camera and monitor are used to communicate which means the environment participants are in as well as the information they transmit is distorted (Heath & Luff, 1993). Hence, the nonverbal behavior produced may not be similar to the behavior perceived (Heath & Luff, 1993). As a result, certain nonverbal movements may not have the same impact in VMC as they do in FTF. A communicator’s view of the other person is from one specific angle and a large part of the environment as well as the body of the interactant is not visible. Moreover, the audio channel in VMC differs from FTF, as there may be a delay in the audio signal and audio can be out of sync with video (Sanford, Anderson, & Mullin, 2004).

Thus, it may be that nonverbal cues are used and perceived differently in VMC and FTF as a means to compensate for the lack of physical presence and the limited bandwidth. Social information processing (SIP) theory poses that when fewer cues are available, people adapt to the remaining cues (Walther, 1992). Therefore, it may well be possible that people utilize certain nonverbal cues differently in VMC than FTF to compensate for a reduction in presence.

Although the limited bandwidth in VMC and the absence of physical presence may be viewed as restrictions to a conversation, in initial “getting to know each other” interactions, VMC may be a safer platform for social interactions than physically copresent communication. A lack of physical presence means fewer social skills are required and individuals feel an increased sense of control over the interaction (Philippot & Douilliez, 2011). Copresent FTF communication may more easily embarrass communicators, and cause tension in the form of distress and unease among communicators (Manstead et al., 2011). Additionally, in VMC, participants may feel less identifiable as they are only partially visible. Hence, they may feel less exposed and more anonymous in VMC, and less concerned with how they are coming across or are being evaluated by their interaction partner. This suggests that, for some people, VMC may be a safer environment than FTF communication, especially in initial interactions (Lapidot-Lefler & Barak, 2012).

Nonverbal cues: Multiple relational meanings

Thus, initial interactions in VMC are likely to differ from copresent FTF interactions. More specifically, the absence of physical copresence in VMC may protect communicators from certain social constraints, such as the perception and impact of (facial) rejection cues, normally present in FTF interactions (Manstead et al., 2011). As noted above, although nonverbal behaviors can be communicated through VMC, technological constraints may distort them so that they cannot be picked up (Fullwood, 2007). This distortion may result in communication which has less of a human feel to it. Since nonverbal cues are essential in the process of relationship initiation and impression formation, it may be that they do not have the same impact over a mediated system like VMC, compared to copresent FTF communication. If nonverbal cues are indeed perceived differently in VMC, compared to FTF, we may also react differently to the communication of these cues in initial social interactions.

The messages that nonverbal cues relay are not unambiguous (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999). According to the social meaning model, nonverbal behaviors have connotative meanings that are culturally and socially constructed (e.g., Knapp, Hall, & Horgan, 2013; Ray & Floyd, 2006). Therefore, nonverbal cues have various social meanings in different contexts and cultures; eye contact, for instance, is often seen as a cue for affection (Gore, 2009), but it can also indicate anger or intimidation (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999). The social meaning model attempts to show that nonverbal behaviors convey multiple social meanings that vary among senders and receivers. Therefore, when studying nonverbal behavior it is important not to focus on the social meaning of single cues but on the occurrence of multiple cues and how these may come across in interactions.

The present study focuses on the expression of the following visual cues: smiling, forward lean, postural matching, head nods, mutual gaze, and facial touching (e.g., Farley, Hughes, & LaFayette, 2013). Additionally, this study analyzes the following auditory cues: pitch variation, vocal intensity, speech rate, and vocal tension. It is likely that these nonverbal behaviors are less pronounced in VMC compared to FTF communication, due to the physical distance and the technical constraints the medium imposes in terms of bandwidth and potential delays in transmission (Manstead et al., 2011). Aspects of body orientation and postural cues may be best displayed and reciprocated in FTF communication where the entire body of the communicators is visible as well as the communicative environment (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999; Mehrabian, 1969).

Nonverbal cues can have both positive and negative meanings. People can communicate positive affect through nonverbal involvement or immediacy cues. When individuals actively participate with each other in a conversation they show kinesic and vocal expressiveness as well as physical and vocal energy (Coker & Burgoon, 1987). Communicators involved in an interaction are believed to integrate their feelings and thoughts into an interaction, while uninvolved communicators come across as distracted, withdrawn and/or psychologically removed from the interaction (Burgoon, Buller, White, Afifi, & Buslig, 1999). Specifically, involvement often manifests itself in cues that signal vocal activity, speech rate, and postural relaxation (Dunbar & Burgoon, 2005). Additionally, nonverbal involvement in an interaction is marked by the occurrence of more relational gestures, head nods, facial expressiveness, and a direct body orientation (Coker & Burgoon, 1987). Finally, gaze signals a desire to communicate, while gaze aversion has primarily negative connotations and can reveal disinterest, detachment, and dislike toward an interaction partner (e.g., Burgoon et al., 1999).

Similar to involvement, immediacy is believed to enhance direct communication and closeness between communicators and lead to positive outcomes such as communication satisfaction, intimacy, and social attraction (Babin, 2013; Madlock, 2008; Manstead et al., 2011). Unlike involvement, immediacy involves the expression of implicit indicators of liking of a communicator toward an addressee (Walther, Loh, & Granka, 2005). Nonverbally, greater immediacy is communicated through variations in posture and proximity which enhance psychological closeness between two communicators (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999; Mehrabian, 1969). Previous studies analyzed immediacy nonverbally in the form of postural lean, touch, smiling, and postural mirroring (Burgoon et al., 1999; Walther et al., 2005). Additionally, immediacy can be communicated through vocal cues like vocal pitch variation and vocal intensity (Ray & Floyd, 2006).

Although the aforementioned cues signal positive affect, communicators can also show negative affect nonverbally through postural cues, such as random head or trunk movements and postural shifting, and other cues such as self-touching (Coker & Burgoon, 1987; Mehrabian, 1969; Walther et al., 2005). Tense communicators often smile less and in addition express more vocal tension and a higher pitch (Coker & Burgoon, 1987). Nonverbal behaviors that suggest tension can come across as unpleasant and correspond to body positions which involve muscle tension and nervous activity (Mehrabian, 1969).

Hence, the expression of nonverbal affiliative behaviors differs depending on what medium communicators use and the constraints that medium imposes. However, it remains unclear whether and how communicators in VMC express nonverbal affiliative behaviors in comparison to their FTF counterparts, as most previous studies have not yet analyzed VMC with eye contact. How communicators in VMC nonverbally express themselves when they can transmit many of the same cues as in FTF interactions has to the best of our knowledge not been studied yet in the context of social attraction and relationship initiation. This is why a research question is posed:

RQ1: To what extent do VMC and FTF communication differ regarding the expression of nonverbal affiliative behaviors?

Nonverbal cues and social attraction

The second aim of this research is to determine whether nonverbal cues in VMC and FTF communication influence social attraction. Previous CMC research shows that communicators adapt to a constrained communication situation (e.g., Jiang & Hancock, 2013), but those studies did not analyze VMC. The nonverbal affiliative behaviors outlined above may enhance or reduce social attraction. As said, the meaning nonverbal cues carry and the effect they may have is ambiguous and may vary according to sender and context (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999) which is why we pose a second and a third research question:

RQ2: To what extent do nonverbal affiliative behaviors result in the enhancement or impairment of social attraction?

Sample and procedure

An experiment was conducted among 186 undergraduate students (50.0% female) with an age ranging from 18 to 32 (M = 21.54; SD = 2.50). Most of the students were recruited from courses in communication (59.7%), while the remaining 40.3% came from various other undergraduate courses. The students were randomly assigned to a cross-sex dyad with an unacquainted individual. We chose cross-sex dyads because adding gender composition (same-sex and cross-sex dyads) to our experimental design could have led to power problems, as adding both male-only and female-only dyads to our design would mean collecting thrice as much data. For this reason, we focused on cross-sex dyads only. Moreover, we chose cross-sex dyads as previous research shows that opposite-sex interactions are livelier and elicit more arousal (e.g., Argyle & Dean, 1965). For this reason, we decided to include only cross-sex dyads as a means to provoke nonverbal affiliative behavior.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: FTF communication (n = 92) or VMC (n = 94). Both participants of a dyad were asked to report to different rooms to ensure they did not meet prior to the start of the experiment. A get-acquainted exercise was used for the experiment. Participants were instructed to get to know each other by means of a conversation during which they are free to talk about anything. Participants interacted for 12 min and were not allowed to end the conversation before this time limit. After the experiment, participants were asked to indicate whether they knew the other person prior to the interaction and none indicated they knew the other beforehand.

In the VMC condition, participants were seated in separate cubicles in the same building, but on different floors to ensure they would not run into each other prior to the experiment. In the FTF condition, the participants were led to an office where the conversation took place. During the conversation, they sat across from each other in a chair with a table in between them. In the VMC condition, participants communicated via an Eye-Catcher, a type of VMC with a high-resolution camera set up behind the screen; invisible to the participant. Because of the camera’s center screen location, participants were able to look at the screen and make eye contact at the same time (Shahid et al., 2012) without being able to see themselves. In the VMC condition, the Eye-Catcher was placed on a table in front of them. This mimicked the FTF condition, where participants sat across from each other at a table. Hence, in both conditions, participants sat at roughly equal distance from each other. This is not possible with webcams which are usually placed above the screen, making it seem as if the participants are looking down while communicating.

Both the VMC and the FTF conversations were recorded. After the experiment, participants were asked to fill in a short questionnaire and they did so individually in separate rooms, without having any further contact. During the experiment, the participants were unaware that they were being filmed, so this would not influence their conversation. After the experiment, participants were asked for permission to use their recordings for analyses to which none of them objected. Finally, participants were debriefed and either paid a small fee or given course credit for their participation.

Coding of visual nonverbal cues

Nonverbal visual behavior was coded on the video-only portion of the recorded conversations with the video annotation software program ELAN (version 4.6.2) (Wittenburg, Brugman, Russel, Klassmann, & Sloetjes, 2006). ELAN integrates the video image with a timeline on which one can place annotations, making it possible to analyze frequencies and the duration of particular cues. Two trained coders coded the video-only portion of the recordings which consisted of one video file for each participant. Nonverbal behavior was coded at a microbehavioral level by coding the occurrence of cues (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999; Ray & Floyd, 2006). Microscopic measurement of nonverbal behavior involves single, concrete behaviors or cues (Burgoon & Baesler, 1991). Based on the recommendations given by Burgoon and Baesler (1991), nonverbal behaviour was coded by dividing the recordings into 2-min segments. Minutes 2:00–4:00, 6:00–8:00, and 10:00–12:00 were analyzed. These intervals were long enough for the coders to code the occurrence of multiple nonverbal behaviors and to establish the dynamics of behavioral change. The size of these intervals is appropriate to measure the occurrence of sequential (time-based) nonverbal behaviors and achieve high coder agreement (Burgoon & Baesler, 1991).

To establish intercoder reliability, two coders analyzed 40 (20%) separate video files, which were randomly selected. At the start of the coding process, the coders sat together to discuss the coding process and codebook. After that, they analyzed the same video file, after which any discrepancies and disagreements were discussed. For the 40 files, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated for each variable in the codebook to determine the consistency of the relative frequency of the cues across both coders. An ICC between .41 and .60 is moderate, substantial between .60 and .80, and near perfect beyond .80 (Landis & Koch, 1977). All analyses were conducted by aggregating the individual scores of the participants of the three time intervals and subsequently collapsing those scores.

Coding of auditory nonverbal cues

In order to analyze vocal cues, the audio track of the conversations was analyzed with a software program called Praat (http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/). The audio recordings of all conversations for both experimental conditions were edited into 1-min segments of which only time intervals 2:00–4:00, 6:00–8:00, and 10:00–12:00 were analyzed. Those time intervals were subsequently evaluated in Praat which automatically analyzes speech and speech processes from both an acoustic and a physiological point of view. Although the coding of the visual nonverbal cues was based on a video recording for each individual participant, the coding of the auditory cues was based on a single audio recording of the conversation as a whole. Hence, we did not sum the individual measurements of the auditory cues, as the analyses in Praat were based on recordings of the conversations both participants had together, and not on individual recordings of the participants of a dyad.

Self-report measures

The effect of nonverbal cues on social attraction

Our second research question asked as to what extent nonverbal affiliative behaviors affect social attraction. Speech rate and gaze aversion were the only cues to influence social attraction. Moreover, our third research question asked whether the impact of nonverbal affiliative behaviors would be more pronounced in either the VMC or the FTF condition. The results showed that a higher speech rate positively influenced social attraction in the VMC condition only. Our findings suggest that the faster people spoke and the more and the longer they averted their gaze, the more attracted their interaction partners were toward them. Speech rate signals involvement in an interaction and is indicative of communication ease, efficiency and fluency (Coker & Burgoon, 1987). Moreover, faster speech is believed to show affinity (Coker & Burgoon, 1987). As a result, communicators who speak faster often appear as more pleasant and friendlier compared to uninvolved communicators (Burgoon et al., 1999). Our results show that this is indeed the case; but only in the VMC condition.

Gaze aversion positively influencing social attraction is in contrast with many studies that highlight the importance of gaze in interpersonal interactions (e.g., Bohannon et al., 2013; Burgoon et al., 1999; Walther et al., 2005). However, a distinction can be made between gaze and mutual gaze. It is possible to gaze at your communication partner without him/her matching your gaze. In this study, we analyzed the frequency and the duration of averted gazes, but we did not examine whether the interaction partners were matching each other’s gaze. Hence, we do not know how often mutual gaze was established and it is possible that whenever an individual gazed at their interaction partner it went by unnoticed. Studies show that interaction partners are generally evaluated more positively, the longer and less frequent their gazes are. Since we measured gaze as a combination of frequency and duration, this may explain our results. To determine whether this is in fact the case, we ran our analyses again with gaze frequency and duration as separate variables. ¹ The analysis revealed that neither frequency nor duration of averted gazes alone impacted social attraction, which suggests that it is in fact only these two variables combined that influences social attraction.

Furthermore, previous research showed that there are sex differences when it comes to the use of gaze (Burgoon, Coker, & Coker, 1986). For this reason, we ran additional analyses for the effect of gaze on social attraction, for males and females separately, to control for a possible influence of sex. These analyses revealed that the effect of gaze aversion on social attraction was only significant for female participants. ² This is in line with previous studies on cross-sex dyads and courtship/flirtation, which showed that females tend to take control in initial interactions through subtle nonverbal signals such as short glances at their partners (Grammer, Kruck, Juette, & Fink, 2000). Moreover, Scherwitz and Helmreich (1973) found that higher levels of mutual gaze result in less attraction, but only in same-sex dyads. As our study focused only on cross-sex interactions, it may be interesting for future studies to include both same- and cross-sex dyads to see if there is indeed a sex difference in both the expression and effect of nonverbal affiliative behavior in initial interactions.

Besides speech rate and gaze aversion, none of the other nonverbal cues directly affected social attraction. Hence, we did not find a conclusive answer to our second research question with regard to whether nonverbal affiliative behaviors result in the enhancement or impairment of social attraction. Thus, although we found that communicators in VMC spoke louder and expressed more animated smiles compared to FTF communicators, who displayed more facial touching and vocal pitch variation, none of these cues impacted social attraction. Moreover, speech rate was found to only enhance social attraction in the VMC condition and gaze aversion did not differ between VMC and FTF communication. Since these cues were the only cues to enhance attraction, this suggests social attraction developed largely independent of the communication mode and the expression of the majority of the nonverbal affiliative cues we examined in this study.

We propose two explanations for the finding that most of the nonverbal affiliative cues examined in this research did not impact social attraction. First, the study of nonverbal behavior is complex and multidimensional, as individuals express a substantial amount of nonverbal information, both consciously and subconsciously, which includes single cues and combinations of cues that may convey more than one meaning. According to the social meaning model, nonverbal behaviors can carry multiple social meanings which are different for both senders and receivers in an interaction (Ray & Floyd, 2006). Thus, in the context of this study, the nonverbal cues analyzed may have been interpreted by the participants as something other than affection or attraction toward them.

Second, studies suggest that nonverbal cues may be used differently and do not have the same effects in VMC, compared to FTF communication (e.g., Heath & Luff, 1993). More specifically, our results revealed that speech rate enhanced social attraction in VMC only. In addition, the effect of gaze aversion on social attraction was close to significance in the FTF condition. This suggests that the effects of these two nonverbal behaviors on social attraction varied based on the communication condition. Certain subtle nonverbal behaviors may be less noticeable in VMC or not come across at all (Sanford et al., 2004). Moreover, studies on VMC show that nonverbal signals are often distorted and hence not picked up by others (Heath & Luff, 1993). Even when video quality is high, nonverbal signals are still found to have less of an impact in VMC, compared to FTF communication (Fullwood, 2007), which may explain why gaze aversion only enhanced social attraction in FTF communication. However, our results also show that an auditory cue like speech rate does have an impact in VMC, which suggests that different cues enhance social attraction in different communication modes.

Theoretical implications

A first implication is that when studying new CMC technologies like VMC, we need to move away from discussing the number of cues various media have and move toward creating a more coherent overview of the differences between mediated and non-mediated technologies. When the transmission of both visual and auditory cues is possible, people still express themselves differently depending on whether or not a conversation is mediated. Hence, it may be that the aspect of mediation itself, or the absence of physical presence, influences the way people express themselves in an interaction. VMC may be a more attractive medium as people are not in the same room. They may be less easily embarrassed and more comfortable compared to a copresent FTF interaction.

Second, the role of nonverbal cues in the achievement of social attraction may be less significant than previous studies claim. The present study demonstrates that in comparing FTF communication and VMC, with the exception of speech rate and gaze aversion, these cues do not explain why individuals are attracted to one another, at least not in an open conversation in which people have to get to know each other. This is in contrast with ample research that highlights the importance of nonverbal cues in relationship initiation and development (e.g., Babin, 2013; Burgoon et al., 1999; Ray & Floyd, 2006). However, a recent study by Ta, Babcock, and Ickes (2016), that also examined nonverbal behavior in initial interactions, found that nonverbal behaviors like smiling, gaze, and head nods did not impact the outcomes of the interactions. The authors concluded that while these behaviours are an important part of communication, the key to establishing common-ground understanding in initial interactions is verbal, and not nonverbal, communication. Moreover, previous studies on CMC and social attraction demonstrated that when people get to know each other, they use the cues they have at their disposal to express affection and become attracted toward each other, for example, verbal statements of liking (e.g., Walther et al., 2005). In fact, previous research found that explicit statements of liking are more common in CMC compared to FTF interactions (e.g., Antheunis et al., 2012). Thus, it may be that in initial interactions, nonverbal cues have a relatively small effect on social attraction compared to, for instance, verbal cues.

Finally, this study has important implications for SIP theory (Walther, 1992). The findings of this research show that in VMC, communicators display more immediate nonverbal behaviors compared to their FTF counterparts. This suggests that despite the availability of nonverbal cues in CMC, communicators still feel the need to compensate for the physical distance and do so through the expression of nonverbal immediacy cues. Hence, even in cue-rich VMC, communicators still adapt to the medium. SIP currently mainly focuses on text-based CMC and thus identifies different strategies in the adaptation process, such as the use of emoticons and chronemics. We believe the results of the current study show that SIP can be extended to include cue-richer forms of CMC, such as nonverbal immediacy cues to compensate for the limitations of mediated interactions.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

Although our study provides new insights into how communicators express nonverbal affiliative behaviors in initial interactions in VMC and FTF communication and how these behaviors relate social attraction in the context of relationship development, our study is not without limitations. First, although we coded every dyadic conversation for visual nonverbal cues for each participant separately, we could not do so for the auditory cues as we were unable to isolate the individual voices. Therefore, we were unable to code variables like speech rate and pitch variation for each participant individually. Although we did try to include auditory cues identified in previous research as elements of the communication of liking (e.g., Ray & Floyd, 2006), males and females may differ in the use of these cues. Hence, it would be interesting for follow-up research to analyze nonverbal auditory affiliate behavior for males and females separately to see if there are sex differences in the expression of these cues.

Furthermore, in the present research, nonverbal behavior was coded at a microlevel by coding the occurrence of single cues. Another way of coding nonverbal behavior is by coding each conversation as a whole on the basis of global gestalt-type measures on perceptions of, for instance, involvement, warmth, friendliness, and pleasantness (Burgoon & Le Poire, 1999). Research shows that apart from individual visual and auditory cues, nonverbal affiliative behavior has also been linked to the encoding of global perceptions of behaviors (Ray & Floyd, 2006). This is because individuals are believed to process individual cues at a more global level. Although the purpose of the present research was to discover sequences of individual behaviors that may signal attraction, future research could extend these findings by including global gestalt-type attributes as well. Individual nonverbal affiliative cues may be related to more proximal interaction qualities, such as warmth and friendliness, which may, in turn, influence social attraction in initial interactions (Burgoon & Baesler, 1991). Thus, future research on nonverbal affiliative behavior could include both concrete nonverbal behaviors and proximal perceptions to create a more coherent overview of nonverbal affiliative behavior in initial interactions, as well as a possible relationship between the occurrence of individual behaviors and global interaction attributes (Burgoon & Baesler, 1991).

Moreover, in the present research, we investigated both the occurrence of single cues and the duration of specific cues, such as gaze aversion. We coded the duration of gaze aversion as research shows that high levels of direct gaze (90% of the time) are related to more immediacy and more social and physical attraction (Burgoon, Manusov, Mineo, & Hale, 1985). However, coding the duration of other cues, such as smiling or forward lean, may have resulted in more significant findings. More specifically, a smile was only coded after a change in an individual’s facial expression occurred; so if participants smiled continually, we did not code this as a smile. Thus, if a participant was continuously smiling, the coding process did not capture this and this is a limitation of the present research. Including both the frequency and duration of single cues may have led to more significant findings, which is something future research might explore.

In addition, in this study, we analyzed whether an individual’s use of specific nonverbal cues, like gaze, would influence the other’s attraction toward them. Hence, we analyzed whether the use of a cue like gaze by interaction partner A in a dyad would influence partner B’s attraction toward partner A. In contrast, it could be that the use of these nonverbal affiliative cues communicates an underlying message. More specifically, it could be that partner A’s use of gaze, or another nonverbal cue, signals their attraction toward partner B. Thus, the more attracted partner A is to partner B in an interaction, the more he or she uses specific nonverbal cues to signal this attraction, whether consciously or not. Hence, just as specific nonverbal cues may reflect immediacy or involvement (Coker & Burgoon, 1987; Ray & Floyd, 2006), there may be certain cues that individuals use in initial interactions as their attraction for their conversation partner grows. Few studies have analyzed the effects of nonverbal cues, like gaze, during an interaction. An early study by Williams and Kleinke (1993) found that mutual gaze in initial, cross-sex interactions elevates blood pressure and heart rate which may suggest attraction. It would be interesting for future research to analyze whether the use of specific nonverbal cues, like gaze, are in fact employed more frequently by individuals as a means to express their attraction toward their conversation partner in initial interactions. This could be done by measuring the heart rate during an interaction, or by analyzing verbal statements of affection throughout a conversation to see if an increase of mutual gaze is accompanied by an increase in the use of these statements.

The effect nonverbal cues have in the context of relationship development may also differ cross-culturally. Research suggests that the ways in which communicators adopt levels of gaze, proximity, and other nonverbal cues are derived in part from cultural norms (Argyle & Dean, 1965). For example, while long periods of eye contact can be uncomfortable for most Americans, in Japan this can be seen as a sign of understanding and respect (Barnlund, 1989). Additionally, greater nonverbal immediacy behaviors are believed to correspond to more positive attitudes only if those behaviors do not exceed those expected by the norms of a certain (sub)culture (Mehrabian, 1969). Moreover, the communication of emotions is also believed to be influenced by cultural norms for the expression of emotions (Manstead et al., 2011). These findings show that cultural norms may play an important role in the expression of nonverbal affiliative behaviors.

Finally, as noted above, in our study we focus exclusively on the role of nonverbal behavior in the context of relationship development, while previous research also highlights the importance of verbal cues, such as self-disclosure or verbal statements of liking, in the development of close relationships (e.g., Ruppel, 2015). As our findings suggest that nonverbal cues have a relatively small effect on social attraction in initial interactions, it may be interesting for future research to analyze both verbal and nonverbal affiliative behaviors to discover whether there is a difference in how individuals express themselves both verbally and nonverbally in VMC and FTF communication in other relationship contexts.