Sex Roles, Vol. 7, No.

3, 1981

Sex Roles and N o n v e r b a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n Skills I

Judith A. Hall 2 and Amy G. Halberstadt

The Johns Hopkins University

As a step toward understanding sex differences in nonverbal decoding and en-

coding abilities, the hypothesis that sex-role variables are related to these com-
munication abilities was tested. An analysis was undertaken o f 11 studies on the
relationship o f encoding and decoding abilities to sex roles, including several
masculinity and femininity scales, a measure o f attitudes toward women, and a
questionnaire on sex roles in the home. Although the relationships o f the mas-
culinity and femininity measures to decoding were generally weak, more "mas-
culine" people tended to be better decoders. Patterns also emerged showing that
the magnitude o f the correlations varied with age group, sex, sex-role scale, and
channel o f communication. In addition, among women, those who were more
"liberated" according to several indices were better decoders, at least o f a
woman stimulus person. Differences between the sexes in encoding and decod-
ing abilities were unaffected by partialling out the masculinity and femininity
measures. A hypothesis concerning the adaptive uses o f nonverbal sensitivity is
advanced, as well as a hypothesis concerning overall sex differences in nonverbal
communication skills.

T h e s t u d y o f sex differences in n o n v e r b a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n skills has a long his-

t o r y in social p s y c h o l o g y (e.g., Gates, 1 9 2 3 ; A l l p o r t , 1924). Over 60 studies o f
males' a n d f e m a l e s ' ability to d e c o d e n o n v e r b a l cues have b e e n p u b l i s h e d , as

1Part of this research was conducted while the authors held National Science Foundation
Graduate Fellowships, and was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation
Award to the first author and by a grant from the Biomedical Research Support Program,
National Institutes of Health, to The Johns Hopkins University. This paper could not have
been prepared without the generosity of several colleagues and students who made their
unpublished results available. These people are (alphabetically): Bella M. DePaulo, Karen
I. Fischer, Judith Harackiewicz, Leonard A. Kusnitz, Carol J. Mills, James G. Simmons,
Ann L. Weber, and Miron Zuckerman. In addition, Bert F. Green, Jr., Bella M. DePaulo,
and Marylee C. Taylor provided many appreciated suggestions and criticisms on an earlier
draft.
2 The first author was formerly named Judith H. Koivumaki. Please address correspondence
to Judith A. Hall, now in the Department of Psyctlology and Social Relations, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.

273
0360-0025/81/0300-0273503.00/0 © 1981 Plenum Publishing Corporation
274 Hall and HalbeTstadt

have over 20 studies of nonverbal encoding (sending) skills in men and women.
Hall (1978) reviewed the literature on sex differences in decoding affective cues
in the face, body, and voice tone channels and concluded that according to
several indices females were better judges of the affective meanings of these
cues than were males. Hall (1978) determined that the frequency of occurrence
of female advantage (84% of studies in which direction was known) and the
magnitude of this sex difference (.400) did not vary appreciably with the age
group tested or the sex of the stimulus person(s), and that the female advantage
was somewhat greater for visual (mainly facial) cues than for auditory nonverbal
cues.
In addition, Hall (Note 1) examined the literature on the encoding of non-
verbal cues, and concluded that females were better encoders than males, using
several indices including frequency of occurrence of female advantage (71% of
studies in which direction was known) and magnitude of effect (.660). The dif-
ference was pronounced for visual cues and averaged zero for auditory cues.
Several possible explanations of these sex differences are listed by Hall
(1978, Note 1). One is a social learning hypothesis that relates these sex differ-
ences to sex-role-related aspects of personality - that is, behaviors that are dif-
ferentially valued and expected for the sexes. According to this hypothesis, girls
and boys learn fairly early in life what is an appropriate constellation of interests
and abilities .-for their gender, and through modeling, reinforcement, and "self-
socialization" (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) come to adopt them. Popular stereo-
type, supported by empirical work (e.g., Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clark-
son, & Rosenkrantz, 1972), suggests that interpersonal skills, interpersonal
harmony, and an "expressive" style are part of the female constellation, and this
constellation is represented on most scales measuring "feminine" behaviors.
Traits represented among the "masculine" constellation are "agentic" or instru-
mental and generally have an emphasis on personal efficacy, self-confidence, and
task accomplishment. These traits are typically represented in masculine scale
items.
Since sex differences are observed both in the nonverbal skills described
above and in these gender-related aspects of personality, it seems plausible to
hypothesize that we would find within-sex correlations of sex-role variables and
nonverbal skills. The abilities to send and receive nonverbal cues of emotion may
be characteristic of more "feminine" persons of either sex, When femininity is
defined as including relevant interpersonal motivations and skills. Similarly, we
might hypothesize that more "masculine" persons of either sex would be poorer
nonverbal senders and receivers.
One purpose of the present research was to investigate the masculinity
and femininity hypotheses of sex differences in nonverbal abilities. Data were
assembled from 11 previously unreported investigations of decoding ability
and/or encoding ability in which measures of masculinity and femininity were
Sex Roles and Nonverbal Skills 275

employed. All of the studies employed one or more measures of ability to de-
code or encode nonverbal cues conveyed via face, body, or content-free speech,
and they employed one or more measures of masculinity and femininity mea-
sured on separate unipolar scales. Additional related sex-role measures were also
available in some studies. These include scores on vectors of "androgyny" and
"sex-typing," and scores on bipolar masculinity-femininity scales.
Thus, this analysis takes the form of a "meta-analysis" of research results
(Smith & Glass, 1977). Meta-analysis is a powerful way to integrate and sum-
marize results of independent studies, and as such it can reveal patterns that
would be undetectable in single studies due to small magnitude of effects, small
sample sizes, or interactions of sample characteristics with independent variables.
Research addressing a second hypothesis regarding sex differences in non-
verbal decoding skill is also reported in the present paper. Some authors have
suggested asymmetrical power relations between men and women as a possible
explanation of differences in interpersonal sensitivity, basing their argument on
the hypothesis that persons with less social power need to be especially alert
to the behaviors and moods of more powerful others. Thomas, Franks, and
Calonico (1972) have proposed this as an explanation of women's superior
"role-taking" skill, and English (Note 2) and Weitz (1974) have both proposed
such an explanation for women's superior nonverbal sensitivity.
We did three studies that examined the relationship of women's nonverbal
sensitivity to "oppressed" values or lifestyles. These studies address only a par-
ticular form of the more general hypothesis, in that the kinds of "oppression"
we examined dealt specifically with the gender-role domain (that is, vis4-vis
men), not with overall powerlessness of the sort that might be assessed with
scales of internal-external locus of control or social power.

METHOD

Samples and Procedures

The 11 studies reviewed here were performed by a variety of investigators,

as shown in Table I. Altogether, 793 individuals in six age groups were tested in
the metropolitan areas of Baltimore (MD), Rochester (NY), Boston (MA), and
Newark (DE). All of the studies were either (a) conducted by one or both of the
present authors, (b) conducted at the request of or under the supervision of the
authors, or (c) performed by independent researchers who generously made their
analyses available. A sincere effort was made to achieve consistency in data anal-
ysis, but due to the time span and the number of investigators involved it proved
impossible to obtain all of the analyses from each sample.
276 Hall and Halberstadt

Table I. Sample Characteristics

Study Investigators City Age group N males N females

1 Zuckerman & Rochester Preschool 22a 21a
Przewuzman
(Note 4)
2 Hall (1976) Boston Elementary 17b 22 b
3 Hall& Halberstadt Baltimore Elementary 33 c 28 c
(Note 5)
4 Mills & Kusnitz Baltimore Jr. high 14 23
(Note 6)
5 Harackiewicz& Boston High 67 37
DePaulo
(Note 7)
6 Weber & Simmons Baltimore High 73 107
(Note 8)
7 Fischer (1977) Newark College 80 84
8 DePaulo
(Note 9) Boston College 20 19
9 Halberstadt & Hall Baltimore College 15 13
(Note 10)
10 Hall (1976) Boston Adults 34 34
11 Hall (Note 11) Baltimore Adults 14 16

aAveraged over mother's and father's report.

bAveraged over self, mother's, and father's report.
CAveraged over self and mother's report.

The intervals between collection of nonverbal data and personality data or

questionnaire responses varied unsystematically from group to group, with a
range from a few minutes to several months. Since several of the instruments
were fairly standard, instructions and the overall testing requirements were
generally similar from study to study.

Instruments

Nonverbal Tests. All but two of the studies employed some form of the
Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS), a motion picture test of ability to de-
code nonverbal cues in face, body, and voice (Hall, Rosenthal, Archer, DiMatteo,
& Rogers, 1977; Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979). In the
PONS, 20 affective scenes are portrayed b y a young Caucasian woman. A two-
second clip from each of these 20 scenes is shown in 11 "channels" of pure and
mixed audiovisual cues (face, body, face + body, and two kinds of content-
masked speech), making a full-length test of 220 items. Several short forms of
Sex Roles and Nonverbal Skills 277

the PONS are available and were used in some of the present studies (for exam-
ple, a 40-item film of just the face-only and body-only items from the full-
length test).
Two studies in the present report employed tests that were not related
to the PONS. Study 1 used 70 slides of facial expressions of male and female
adults (further described in Zuckerman & Przewuzman, 1979). Study 9 used
272 clips of content-masked speech of male and female college students (further
described in Hall, Zuckerman, & Rosenthal, Note 3).
Used in the present analyses were total scores on pure audio and/or pure
video (range = 40-272 items). As Table II shows, not all studies yielded both an
audio score and a video score.
Unipolar Masculinity and Femininity Scales. Several authors have pointed
to the possibility that "masculinity" and "femininity" are not logical opposites
but rather independent and complementary dimensions (e.g., Bern, 1974; Spence
& Helmreich, 1978). Several instruments have now been developed that purport
to tap such dimensions in the realm of personality (as opposed to occupations,
values, or activity preferences). In the studies reported here, four of these con-
ceptually similar sets of unipolar masculinity and femininity scales were em-
ployed (see Table II). In each case the masculinity scale is designed to tap
socially desirable "agentic" or instrumental traits, and the femininity scale is
designed to tap socially desirable "communal" or socioemotional traits. The
four instruments were the Bern Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI; Bern, 1974), the
Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974),
the Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire (CPAQ; Hall, 1976; Hall &
Halberstadt, 1980), and the ANDRO scale (Berzins, Welling, & Wetter, 1978).
In all of the studies except Study 1, subjects filled in one or more of these
instruments describing themselves. In Study 1, which employed preschool
children, ratings on one of these instruments were obtained from the parents.
In Sfudies 2 and 3, both of which employed elementary school children, ratings
were obtained bo.th from the children and from their parents.
In all studies, subjects' scores on the separate masculinity and femininity
scales were employed in the data analyses. In addition, it was possible in several
studies to generate two new scores based on the masculinity and femininity
scores: (1) androgyny score, computed by adding the masculinity and femininity
scores for each subject, (2) sex-typing score, computed by subtracting the
femininity score from the masculinity score for each subject. The androgyny
score is relatively high in the positive direction when one endorses relatively
many masculine and feminine attributes and is relatively low (but never less than
zero) when one endorses few items of either kind. Research has shown that
"high-lfigh" (androgynous) and "low-low" (undifferentiated) individuals, who
would correspond to high and low scorers on this vector, differ from each other
in a number of relevant social skills and attributes (see Kelly & Worell, 1977,
278 Hall and Halberstadt

Table II. Instruments Employed in Studies a

Nonverbal tests Masculinity and femininity scales

Study Visual Auditory BSRI PAQ CPAQ ANDRO Other
D, E b CPAQ c CMF c
D pAQC CPAQ CAWS,
MF c, CMF
D CPAQ, CMF,
CPAQC CMF c
4 D BSRI FE
5 D BSRI
6 D PAQ ANDRO MF
7 D D ANDRO
8 D D BSRI
9 D, E PAQ MF
10 D D PAQ AWS,
MF, HQ
11 D D PAQ ANDRO AWS,
MF, HQ

aBSRI = B e m Sex-Role Inventory; PAQ = Personal Attributes Questionnaire; CPAQ =

Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire; ANDRO = ANDRO scale based on
Personality Research Form; CMF = MF scale from CPAQ; MF = MF scale from PAQ;
CAWS = Children's Attitudes toward Women Scale; FE = Femininity scale of California
Psychological Inventory; AWS = Attitudes toward Women Scale; HQ = Questionnaire
on sex roles in the home (home-life questionnaire).
bD means decoding scores were available; E means encoding scores were available.
CFilled in by one or both parents describing the child.

for m o r e discussion o f t h e c o n c e p t a n d correlates o f a n d r o g y n y ) . O n t h e sex-

t y p i n g vector, a h i g h positive score indicates t h e e n d o r s e m e n t o f relatively m a n y
m a s c u l i n e a t t r i b u t e s a n d relatively few f e m i n i n e traits, while a h i g h negative
score i n d i c a t e s t h e reverse; t h u s it i n d i c a t e s degrees o f imbalance.3
Bipolar Masculinity-Femininity Scales. I n all studies using t h e P A Q or
CPAQ an a d d i t i o n a l scale was e m p l o y e d t h a t is a s t a n d a r d p a r t o f t h o s e instru-
m e n t s . This is t h e m a s c u l i n i t y - f e m i n i n i t y ( M F ) scale, a bipolar scale i n w h i c h
t h e a t t r i b u t e s s t e r e o t y p i c a l l y describe one sex b u t n o t t h e o t h e r ( f o r e x a m p l e ,
aggressive). 4 A n o t h e r b i p o l a r m a s c u l i n i t y - f e m i n i n i t y scale, t h e F e m i n i n i t y ( F E )
scale o f t h e California P s y c h o l o g i c a l I n v e n t o r y ( G o u g h , 1957), was e m p l o y e d in

3Though several researchers have employed a 2 X 2 typology based on median splits on the
masculinity and femininity scales creating the four categories of androgynous, mas-
culine-typed, feminine-typed, and undifferentiated- this approach was not used in the
present research. For the present correlational analyses, continuous androgyny and sex-
typing scores, analogous to the continuous masculinity and femininity scores, were de-
sirable.
4For a more detailed discussion of the concepts and rationales for unipolar and bipolar
masculinity-femininity scales see S pence & Helmreich (1978).
Sex Roles and Nonverbal Skills 279

one study. The FE scale appears to tap mainly sex-typed interests and some
neurotic tendencies (Mills, 1978).
Measures of "Oppressed Status". In three studies, the short Attitudes
toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973) or the Children's
Attitudes toward Women Scale (CAWS; Hall, 1976) was used. Both of these
scales are intended to tap the egalitarian-mindedness o f individuals on issues rela-
ting to women's role in society. Finally, in two studies, a short questionnaire was
administered concerning, among other things, the sex-role traditionality of the
subjects' marriages and the proportion of a variety of household chores per-
formed by the subjects.

Analyses

In each study, the nonverbal test scores were correlated with the sex-role-
related measures. The purpose o f the present paper is not primarily to present
results for individual studies, but rather to do a more powerful analysis o f the
studies as a group. In this meta-analysis, the correlation coefficients for mascu-
linity and femininity are treated as observations, and the 11 studies are treated
as cases.
Some of the correlations for masculinity and femininity were not inde-
pendent, due to the use of multiple measures within studies; for example, in
Study 6 the correlations o f decoding ability with the ANDRO masculinity scale
and with the PAQ masculinity scale were not independent s since b o t h corre-
lations were based on the same subjects. In order to have independent data for
the analyses, the two or more analogous but nonindependent correlations were
averaged (after transformation to Fisher's z) within each sex for the relevant
samples, s

RESULTS

Masculinity and Femininity

Decoding. The two sex-role measures that were available in all 11 studies
were masculinity and femininity measured on unipolar scales. The correlations

s The following correlations were averaged for this purpose: Study 1, mother's and father's
report of the child; Study 2, self, mother's, and father's report of the child; Study 3, self
and mother's report of the child; Study 6, PAQ and ANDRO; Study 11, PAQ and ANDRO;
Study 11, male and female audio tests in all analyses except those done for sex roles in
the home. Averaging over the analogous masculinity and femininity scales from the differ-
ent instruments appears justified both by correlations reported in the literature (e.g.,
Kelly & Worell, 1977) and by correlations in Studies 6 and 11 here, in which the PAQ and
ANDRO scales were given to the same subjects. The mean correlation between the two
femininity scales was .58 and the mean correlation between the two masculinity scales
was .64.
280 Hall and Halberstadt

between decoding skills and masculinity or femininity were generally very small
and nonsignificant. However, there was a weak tendency for masculinity to be
positively correlated with decoding, and this tendency was significant for video
decoding among males (mean r = .13, combined p = .038; Rosenthal, 1978). 6
This tendency goes counter to the original hypothesis.
Androgyny (masculinity plus femininity) was positively correlated with
video decoding ability among males, indicating that more androgynous males
were better video decoders than less androgynous males (mean r = . 11, combined
p = .067). On the other hand, sex-typing (masculinity minus femininity) was
positively correlated with audio decoding ability among females, indicating that
more "masculine" sex-typed females tended to be better judges of audio non-
verbal cues than more "feminine" sex-typed females (mean r = .13, combined
p = .097). Though these mean correlations are small, they suggest the interesting
possibility that, while masculinity as here operationalized may be beneficial for
the decoding skills of both sexes, femininity may actually be detrimental for
females' decoding skill.
Despite the small correlations, further analyses demonstrated that there
were some striking patterns in these correlations, indicating that the weak rela-
tionships were not merely due to unreliability. Analyses of variance were per-
formed in which the correlation coefficients were observations and the inde-
pendent variables were age group (three or four levels, depending on the anal-
ysis), sex, and/or scale (masculinity vs. femininity). Sex and scale were within-
cases or repeated measures factors.
Table III shows the mean correlations according to age group, separately
for the masculinity and femininity scales. For visual cues, there was a main
effect of the scale, such that the correlations of decoding with masculinity were
significantly more positive than were the correlations of decoding with femi-
ninity (mean r for masculinity = .12, mean r for femininity = . 0 2 ; F ( 1 , 6 ) = 9.13,
p = .024, effect size = 2.470). 7
Table Ill also shows that the correlations of decoding with femininity de-
creased linearly with age, F(1, 3) = 11.37, p = .044, effect size = 3.89o). This
linear trend was comparable for video and audio considered separately (effect
sizes = 2.070 and 1.980, respectively).
In addition, for the video channel, the interaction of age group with scale
was significant, F(3, 6) = 8.56, p = .014, eta = .90. A contrast showed that the
curves for masculinity and femininity scales for video, as shown in Table III,
crossed linearly, F(1, 6) = 21.27, p = :004, effect size = 3.770. This effect was of

6All tests of significance are two-tailed.

7Cohen (1969) defines the effect size estimate as the difference between the means of two
groups divided by their within-group standard deviation. An effect size of greater than
.500 is considered to be visible to the naked eye, and an effect size of greater than .80a is
considered to be "large" (Cohen, 1969).
Sex Roles and Nonverbal Skills 281

Table III. Correlations of Visual and Auditory Decoding Skill with

Masculinity and Femininity, by Age Group
Preschool and Jr. high and
Correlation of: elementary high school College Adult
Masculinity with .08 .06 .10 .25 a
visual
Masculinity with .03 - .12 .05
auditory
Femininity with .13 .07 .01 -.14
visual
Femininity with .07 - -.00 -.15
auditory
ap < .01.

very large magnitude in addition to being significant. It shows that with increas-
ing age, the ability to decode video cues became relatively more positively
correlated with masculinity and relatively more negatively correlated with
femininity. For the sex-typing variable, this interaction showed up as a linear
trend for age group, F(1, 5) = 15.16, p = .011~ effect size = 3.480. Thus, as
samples got older, having a relative excess of masculine over feminine attributes
was increasingly positively related to visual decoding skill.
Because interest in sex-role-related correlates of nonverbal sensitivity
stemmed from the possibility that they mediate sex differences in sensitivity,
it was desirable to partial femininity and masculinity out of the correlations
between sex and decoding. For eight of the 11 studies, these partial correla-
tions could be obtained. In no case was there an appreciable change in the mag-
nitude of the sex difference in decoding ability. The mean correlation o f sex
with decoding was .13, and after partialling out femininity and masculinity the
correlations were .11 and .12, respectively. In addition, the correlations over
the eight studies between the zero-order correlations and the partial correlations
were .98 and .97, respectively. Thus the overall magnitude changed little after
partialling, and the amount of change was homogeneous from study to study.
Therefore, it would seem that masculine and feminine personality as measured
by the scales employed here do not contain the explanation of sex differences
in decoding nonverbal cues.
As described earlier, two bipolar masculinity-femininity scales were ad-
ministered in some studies. The PAQ and CPAQ scale, originally called "sex-
specific" (Spence et al., 1974), was administered in seven studies. On this scale,
a high score indicates stereotypically "masculine" responding. For males this
scale was negligibly correlated with decoding skill [mean r across channels, types
of affect (e.g., positive or negative), and samples was .02]. For females it tended
to be positively correlated, indicating that better-decoding females were more
282 Hall and Halborstadt

masculine (mean r = .12). Though not significant, this correlation parallels in

direction and magnitude the correlation found earlier for the unipolar scales.
The Femininity scale of the CPI (Gough, 1957) was administered in one
study. On this scale, high scores indicate more feminine responding. For video
decoding (the only channel available), the correlations were negative though
nonsignificant, r(12) = - . 1 4 for boys, r(21) = - . 0 6 for girls. Again, more mascu-
line persons, in this case junior high school students, were better decoders than
more feminine persons.
Encoding. Encoding skills were measured in only two of the 11 studies.
The correlations with masculinity and femininity were equivocal, with most
of the correlations being small and of inconsistent direction. In Study 9 it was
possible to obtain partial correlations of sex with encoding, controlling for mas-
culinity and femininity. Females showed a marked superiority over males in
encoding, r(27) = .59, p = .0008. The partial correlations, controlling for mascu-
linity, femininity, and the bipolar masculinity-femininity scale of the PAQ,
respectively, were .59, .58, and .60. Thus, the sex difference, as was the case
for decoding, does not seem to be a function of masculinity and femininity as
here measured.

"Oppressed Status"

The short Attitudes toward Women Scale (Spence et al., 1973) was ad-
ministered to adults in two studies, and a children's form of this scale (Hall,
1976) was administered to children in one study. For males we would predict
no particular relationship between decoding ability and this scale, since it is
difficult to see how such a scale could tap any kind of oppression among men.
However, among women we would predict that the more traditional (less egali-
tarian) would be the best decoders, according to the hypothesis stated earlier.
This prediction rests on the assumption that traditionality on questions of
women's rights represents acceptance of an ideology of male domination.
For males, the correlations of attitudes toward women scores with de-
coding skill were negligible, as hypothesized. However, for females the correla-
tions were positive (mean r for video decoding = .27, combined p = .032; mean
r for audio decoding = .27, combined p = .027). This indicates that females
with more egalitarian, "liberal" views toward women's role were better decoders
than more traditional females - exactly the opposite of the original prediction.
In two studies a questionnaire was administered to married people along
with the decoding measures. Here we present results pertaining to (1) subjects'
overall rating of their preference for degree of "traditionality" of the marriage,
regarding division of labor, wage-earning, decision-making, and the like, (2) sub-
jects' overall rating of the actual degree of "traditionality" of the marriage, and
(3) division of labor on two specific chores that are of low status and that are
Sex Roles and Nonverbal Skills 283

Table IV. Correlations of Sex Roles in the Home with Decoding Skill (Women) a
Traditionality Actual % Houseclean- % Laundry
preference traditionality ing performed performed
Decoding Study Study Study Study Study Study Study Study
score 10 11 10 11 10 11 10 11
Visual .02 -.03 -.15 -.02 -.30 -.23 -.12 -.06
(woman's
face and
body)
Auditory -.17 b -.30 -.29 -.21 -.49 e -.13 -.38 d -.28
(woman's
voice)
Auditory
(man's voice) - .41 .47 c - .20 - -.01

a N f o r Study 10 = 34,N for Study 11 = 15.

bAnalogous correlation for husband's rating of wife's preference was -.48, p < .01.
~p < .10.
< .O5.
ep < .01.

typically p e r f o r m e d b y w o m e n - housecleaning and laundry. Thus, we opera-

tionalized the concept o f "oppressed status" b o t h in terms o f subjects' subjec-
tive perceptions and their m o r e objective estimations o f their own sex-role-
related behavior. O f course, these are n o t the only criteria o f "oppressed status"
that one could e m p l o y , but t h e y were reasonable ones to start with. 8 F o r these
measures, the same predictions were made as were made for attitudes t o w a r d
women.
In b o t h studies, the relationships o f the home-life measures to decoding
among males showed no apparent pattern, as e x p e c t e d . For females, the results
were consistent and interpretable (Table IV). Here, the tests e m p l o y i n g a w o m a n
sender p r o d u c e d different results than did the test that e m p l o y e d a man sender.
For the two nonverbal measures that used a w o m a n sender, greater sensitivity to
a u d i t o r y nonverbal cues t e n d e d to be associated w i t h less traditional preferences
and with less actual traditionality, with the c o m b i n e d probability for "actual
t r a d i t i o n a l i t y " being .077. The a m o u n t o f menial h o u s e w o r k p e r f o r m e d by

8 Subjects in Study i0 were also asked about their spouses' performance of chores. Women's
estimates of how much housecleaning they did were positively correlated with their
husbands' independent estimates, r(31) = .56, p < .001, and the same was true for wo-
men's estimates of how much laundry they did, r(31) = .56, p < .001. In addition, wo-
men's performance of chores was positively correlated with their ratings of how traditional
the marriage actually was, r(31) = .55, p < .001 for housecleaning, r(31) = .39, p < .05 for
laundry. Thus, the chore performance data were reliable and were also apparently valid
indicators of the women's perceptions of how traditional the marriage was.
284 Hall and Halbetstadt

women was also negatively related to their ability to decode a woman's cues.
For visual decoding, the combined probability for housecleaning was .061. For
auditory decoding, the combined probabilities were .017 for housecleaning and
.019 for laundry. Thus, it appears that the more "liberated" type of woman -
at least as indicated by these m e a s u r e s - was a better decoder of a woman's
nonverbal cues than was the less "liberated" woman. This is the opposite of the
original prediction, as was the case with attitudes toward women.
The third row of Table IV, showing the correlations with the man-sender
audio test, shows an interesting different pattern, though these correlations
should be interpreted very cautiously since they are based on a single small sam-
ple. There was a tendency for a more traditional marriage (both actual and pre-
ference) and for performance of more housecleaning to be positively associated
with ability to decode a man's voice. If this pattern is reliable, it would suggest
that women who prefer and have more traditional marriages are better at under-
standing a man's subtle messages than are less traditional women. The overall
picture in Table IV would suggest the possibility that women may become better
nonverbal decoders of whichever sex is most salient to them - men in the case
of more traditional women, other women in the case of less traditional women.

DISCUSSION

There was no evidence that more "feminine" and less "masculine" people
would have more developed nonverbal communication skills, nor that the mas-
culinity and femininity scores might account for women's superiority in decod-
ing and encoding nonverbal cues of affect. On the contrary, we found a weak
tendency for more masculine types of people to excel in nonverbal decoding
ability.
Such a tendency suggests a hypothesis concerning the adaptive uses of
nonverbal sensitivity. It may be that the harmonious interpersonal goals (com-
forting others, for example) of the "feminine" person can be achieved through
positive motivation alone, without benefit of superior ability to read other
people, and indeed that a certain lack of awareness of unintentional or dis-
crepant cues may even be beneficial to people who are particularly bent on
having harmony. However, the goals of the more "masculine" person may in-
volve interpersonal effectiveness- accomplishing joint tasks, being a good
leader, winning in c o m p e t i t i o n - and this kind o f effectiveness may require
more developed ability to judge others' feelings and moods. Though this is the
opposite of what was predicted initially, it is consistent with some existing data.
Rosenthal et al. (1979) reported a tendency for persons with a more task-ori-
ented style of leadership to be better decoders than persons with a more socio-
emotional style of leadership, and Hall (Note 12) reported a negative correlation
Sex Roles and Nonverbal Skills 285

for women between self-rated "empathy" and ability to decode positive-domi-

nant affect. Thus, although the concept of nonverbal sensitivity has often been
loosely associated with the concepts of prosociality and empathy, such an as-
sumption may be unwarranted.
The present studies also suggested that females who have more liberated
views on the role of women score higher on decoding nonverbal cues, as do
women who prefer and have less traditional marriages and who perform less
housecleaning and laundry. It is important to note that the latter relationships
were obtained for decoding of a woman stimulus person. For decoding a man's
voice, the correlations for the home-life variables tended to reverse themselves,
suggesting the hypothesis that women who are more traditional understand
what men say nonverbally, whereas the less traditional women understand what
other women say nonverbally. It would be important to employ more senders of
both sexes in future replications of these suggestive patterns.
It would seem that the determinants of females' overall superiority at de-
coding and encoding are neither femininity, masculinity, nor apparent "oppres-
sion" (at least, in the latter case, not for judgments of a woman stimulus). The
provocative question remains: Why are females better decoders and encoders
than males, especially in the visual channels? Several plausible explanations are
still available. One that seems especially promising involves the mediating role of
attention to nonverbal cues. This attention might be motivated by politeness
(Rosenthal & DePaulo, 1979), or possibly by a need on the part of women to
seek indications of approval and disapproval, whose main locus of expression
may be the face. In either case, this attention could, conceivably, be independent
of the dimensions of masculinity, femininity, and "oppression" used in the pres-
ent studies. Women do pay more attention to visual nonverbal cues than men do
(e.g., DePaulo, Rosenthal, Eisenstat, Rogers, & Finkelstein, 1978; Exline, 1972).
The tendency of women to pay attention to others visually and the practice ad-
vantage that this attention implies may be important direct influences on their
nonverbal decoding skill, and may also improve their encoding skill via the
learning of nonverbal codes and usages. Future research could be aimed at assess-
ing the relationship between interpersonal watchfulness and nonverbal decoding
skill, and at examining what kinds of specific cues women may attend to prefer-
entially and to what extent the saliency of the stimulus person might affect non-
verbal judgment in different channels.

REFERENCE NOTES

1. Hall, J. A. Gender effects in encoding nonverbal cues. Unpublished manuscript, Johns

Hopkins University, 1977.
2. English, P. W. Behavioral concomitants o f dependent and subservient roles. Unpub-
lished paper, Harvard University, 1972.
286 Hall and Halberstadt

3. Hall, J. A., Zuckerman, M., & Rosenthal, R. Encoding and decoding vocal nonverbal
communication in two channels. Unpublished manuscript, Johns Hopkins University,
1978.
4. Zuckerman, M., & Przewuzman, S. Unpublished data, University of Rochester, 1976.
5. Hall, J. A., & Halberstadt, A. G. Unpublished data, Johns Hopkins University, 1977.
6. Mills, C. J., & Kusnitz, L. Unpublished data, Johns Hopkins University, 1977.
7. Harackiewicz, J., & DePaulo, B. M. Unpublished data, Harvard University, 1977.
8. Weber, A. L., & Simmons, J. Unpublished data, Johns Hopkins University, 1977.
9. DePaulo, B. M. Unpublished data, Harvard University, 1977.
10. Halberstadt, A. G., & Hall, J. A. Unpublished data, Johns Hopkins University, 1977.
11. Hall, J. A. Unpublished data, Johns Hopkins University, 1977.
12. Hall, J. A. Gender, gender roles, and nonverbal sensitivity. Paper presented at 86th
meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, 1978.

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