¿Vale siempre una imagen más que mil palabras?Experiencia didáctica con estudiantes de Criminología

Abstract

The present study is part of a lecture on non-verbal communication, given to 96 students of the 2nd year of the Degree on Criminology and Security at the University of Cádiz in October 2012. Our aim was that the students were aware of the importance of interpreting emotions properly in jobs related to criminology and security, from data gathered from different sources, both verbal and nonverbal information. For this purpose, we used a previous study (Anta, 2010), from which we took 11 pictures of prisoners from Nanclares de la Oca (Álava, Spain), in which they showed different emotions, like anger, scorn, surprise, sadness and happiness. Our sample needed to identify the emotions expressed in the photographs by means of the observation of their facial expressions. The results prove that it is fundamental to combine the data provided by facial expressions together with other information coming from verbal language, other forms of nonverbal communication and pragmatic information given, for example, by the sender and the context where communication takes place