Week 7 Ambiguous Nonverbal Messages

I have been wrong so many times with how I interpret nonverbal messages from people. I do it almost everyday actually. At school or work I see people all the time who give off these messages with their actions. I've seen couples fight, people become excited, people get sleepy and so much more, all without them having to say a word. Those things are easy to figure out when they happen but there are times when something seems very ambiguous and the interpretation of the meaning can be wrong.

When I worked at Circuit City before it closed down, I had a coworker in my department who always seemed to have the majority of her shifts match with mine. Every time she came into work, she would always get excited and smile and tell me how much fun we are going to have because we are working together. She was very friendly and very nice to me every single time we worked together and I thought it meant that she was interested in me both emotionally and physically. One day she was telling me how one of the co-workers we had kept hitting on her and she was telling me how much she did not like him. To me it was just confirmation that she was into me and I decided to ask her out. Of course, she had a boyfriend and to top it off, I wasn't her type and needless to say, I was embarrassed.

I think if I applied what Trenholm says in the text about how there are three ways to increase the accuracy of a nonverbal message, I would not have been embarrassed. If I would have checked the "context" I would have noticed that she is probably nice to me because she is a nice person overall and is nice to everyone. If I would have compared her "current behavior" to her "baseline behavior" I would have noticed she always tells me how much fun we are going to have at work and that never changed because she probably just likes working with me and that's it. If I would have simply just asked her, if she had a boyfriend, I would have saved myself from so much embarrassment.