A Study of Nonverbal Persuasion in TED Talks

Abstract

This study investigates the realm of nonverbal communication and its persuasive impact in the context of TED talks. Nonverbal communication plays a significant role in effectively conveying persuasive messages, especially in TED talks, which are considered a useful database for the study. Surprisingly, little researches and studies have investigated the role of nonverbal behavior in persuading and influencing others. The study aims to find the most common body movements in TED talks, analyze the common movements kinetically to have a better understanding of these movements, and investigate the nonverbal persuasiveness of the selected movements. The study adopts a model consisting of Birdwhistell's (1952) kinesic analysis model and Andre et al.'s (2011) nonverbal persuasion analysis model. Final results reveal that (1) hand movement is the most common type among other types of movements,  (2) the persuasiveness of nonverbal communication is achieved by basing on the following persuasive body behaviors: importance, emotion, certainty, the sender’s competence, evaluation, and the sender’s benevolence, (3) body language, such as hand gestures, head nods, and facial expressions, can be broken down into smaller parts, these smaller parts, known as the kinemorph, kineme, and kine, make the body movements understandable.