Abstract:

Non-verbal behaviors are defined as behaviors without linguistic content. As an art of interpersonal communication, psychological counseling emphasizes the use of non-verbal behaviors. Existing researches have demonstrated that appropriate non-verbal behaviors could enhance the counseling process. On the other hand, inappropriate non-verbal behaviors have impeded the counseling process. By reviewing previous studies, main problems in this field were summarized as follows: 1) lack of empirical research; 2) limited to counseling process research; as well as 3) monotonous research methods which lead to stagnation of research. There is a call for a breakthrough in this field, and methods from other relevant fields may help to eliminate the bottleneck.

Key words: psychological counseling, nonverbal behavior, counseling relationship