Behavioral communication

Behavioral Communication is a psychological construct that addresses people's use of day-to-day behaviors as a form of communication. Specifically, it refers to people's tendency to express feelings, needs, and thoughts by means of indirect messages and behavioral impacts.

Basically, any behavior (or its absence when one is expected) may be judged as communicative if it has the intent to convey a message. For example, an expressive hairstyle, a show of a certain emotion (or emotional withdrawal), or simply doing (or not doing) the dishes all can be means by which people may convey messages to each other.

The construct of behavioral communication is conceived as a variable of Individual differences. This means that some people more than others tend to engage in behavioral communication in spite of the plausible alternatives of using verbal communication.

A measure of the construct, The Behavioral Communication Questionnaire (M. Ivanov, 2008), has been introduced at the Society for Personality Assessment conference in March, 2008.

The conceptual framework of the construct has been presented at Western Psychological Association Conference in April, 2008.