An Overview: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

The functional perspective outlined in this book attempts to provide a relatively comprehensive and integrative approach to understanding nonverbal behavior. The circumstance that precipitated this effort included a vast inventory of empirical research linked only occasionally to limited theoretical models. Of course, I am responsible for some of the previous theoretical deficiencies in this area. The intimacy-arousal model (Patterson, 1976) may have been an improvement on equilibrium theory (Argyle & Dean, 1965), but it now seems too simplistic and mechanical in light of the complexity of nonverbal exchange. In addition, the results of more recent research, some of it from our own laboratory (Ickes, Patterson, Rajecki, & Tanford, 1982; Patterson, Roth, & Schenk, 1979; Patterson, Jordan, Hogan, & Frerker, 1981), highlighted some of the weaknesses of the earlier models and provided direction for developing this functional approach. An overview of the present model might proceed best by first attending to a general evaluation of the functional perspective.