Alejandro was sitting by himself in the quad, leaned over, with his head resting on the heels of his hands. joe approached and said, "hey alejandro, you look sad." alejandro responded, "huh? no, i'm just thinking." which difficulty in interpreting nonverbal behavior does this exchange exemplify?

Nonverbal cues and behaviors are often ambiguous and superficial. Most of the time, we interpret them in a wrong way. Nonverbal behaviors have no definite meaning and vary according to our cultural references and how they were used in a particular scenario. Joe assumed that Alejandro is sad because our society associated this behavior to what a sad person looks like when it can mean an entirely different thing.