Gender, nonverbal behavior, and perceived dominance: A test of the theory.

We evaluated Henley's (1973, 1977) and Goffman's (1976, 1979) theories about the relation between gender, nonverbal behavior, and perceived dominance in three studies. Our ratings of 1,106 media portrayals (Study 1) and observations of 1,257 people in public settings (Study 2) revealed few gender differences in frequency of head canting or body canting but some gender differences in frequency of smiling. In Study 3, we rated 96 advertisements that included all levels of gender, head cant, body cant, and smiling on five personality dimensions; we obtained only one predicted relation with dominance. It may be that the head canting, body canting, and smiling behaviors of females and males are actually more similar than was previously recognized and, contrary to hypotheses, dominance may not be strongly associated with these behaviors. We used previously suggested notions of gender as a categorizing strategy and as a diffuse status characteristic to explain why hypotheses that associate nonverbal behaviors with dominance and gender have had an acceptance unwarranted by the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)