The nature and culture of nonverbal behavior in sports: theory, methodology, and a review of the literature

ABSTRACT

Research on body language (nonverbal behavior, NVB) in sport is only slowly emerging, although it is considered important and has been frequently studied in other disciplines. The goal of the review is to provide a bio-cultural framework, methodological guidelines, and a review of existing studies on NVB in sport. Three methodological approaches are described to investigate naturally occurring NVB: evaluative, descriptive, and automated coding. Forty five studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria (i.e. peer-reviewed empirical research using either of the methodologies to study the encoding and decoding of in-situ NVB in sports). Critical review methodology was used to integrate the existing research with the outlined bio-cultural framework. There was evidence for both biologically evolved and culturally learned influences on the encoding and decoding of NVB in sports. Results showed that athletes and referees show NVB that is correlated with various internal (e.g. emotions) or contextual (e.g. success) variables and observers can decode these NVBs. Recommendations for future research are made on how researchers can exploit the fact that NVB often informs observers about what is going on inside a person and thereby gain insights on the reciprocal relationships between contextual factors, the athlete, and performance in sports.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport
• nonverbal communication
• body language
• emotion
• facial expression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).