Social cue

A social cue can either be a verbal or non-verbal hint, which can be positive or negative. These cues guide conversation and other social interactions. A few examples of social cues include:

Social cues serve several purposes in social interactions that help to clarify people's meanings and intentions. Cues help provide clues as to whether or not one is being accepted or rejected by those around them. They also provide more information about a person, group or interaction that allow for a higher degree of intimacy and quality of contact. One of the most important impacts of cues on social interactions is the reduction of ambiguity.

Social cues also play a role in intuition.

However, children use social cues somewhat differently from adults. More specifically, children use social cues in order to comprehend and learn about their surroundings. Research has found that children rely more on social cues than adults and that children focus more on gestural than other types of cues.

Facial expressions are signals that we make by moving our facial muscles on our face. Facial expressions generally signify an emotional state, and each emotional state and/or state of mind has a specific facial expression, many of which are universally used around the world. Without seeing someone's facial expression, one would not be able to see if the other person is crying, happy, angry, etc. Furthermore, facial expressions enable us to further comprehend what is going on during situations that are very difficult and/or confusing.

Body language and body posture are other social cues that we use to interpret how someone else is feeling. Other than facial expressions, body language and posture are the main non-verbal social cues that we use.

Gestures are specific motions that one makes with the hands in order to further communicate a message. Certain gestures such as pointing gestures, can help direct people's focus to what is important that is going on around them. Not only does using gestures help the speaker to better process what they are saying, but it also helps whoever is listening to that person to better comprehend what the speaker is saying.

Proximity represents the physical distance and/or closeness between people. Not only does this affect one's ability to see or touch the other person that they are communicating with, but is also affects one feeling of psychological closeness that one person has for the other. Furthermore, studies have found that people feel more connected to each other when they are in closer proximity to each other.

Recent work done in the field studying social cues has found that perception of social cues is best defined as the combination of multiple cues and processing streams. Zaki suggests that there are two social cognitive processes involved in our perceptions of social cues, which are experience sharing and mentalizing. Experience sharing is a person's tendency to take on another person's facial expressions, posture and internal state. Mentalizing is a person's ability to rationalize another person's state, in relation to goals, intentions and behaviors. One's perception of social cues is often impacted by other cues in the environment. According to Zaki, using a combination of experience sharing, mentalizing and other processes is essential to understanding complex social cues.

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