Portfolio Summary

During this project, I feel like I expanded my understanding of the different ways non-verbal communication is used to express emotion beyond the recognition of the things I am used to seeing every day. Everyone is familiar with the typical things you see in everyday conversations, like frowning to express unhappiness or smiling to express happiness. I found it interesting to look a little more in depth and see how things like body positioning, eye contact, gestures and tone of voice also help to articulate emotion without words. It was also interesting to learn about the different uses for non verbal communication when trying to express emotion. I enjoyed learning about how it is used by actors and speakers to portray certain emotions to large audiences, or by advertisers to try and encourage certain emotions among potential customers. I also found it interesting how you could interpret the dynamics between two people fairly accurately simply by observing their non verbal behavior towards each other. Overall, I feel like I have a deeper appreciation for the role of non-verbal communication in expressing emotion, and I will be able to use the things I learned not only to refine my ability to express myself, but also to interpret the emotions of other people when they aren't verbally expressed.