Albert Mehrabian, currently Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA, has become
known best by his publications on the relative importance of verbal and
nonverbal messages. His findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and
attitudes have been misquoted and misinterpreted throughout human
communication seminars worldwide, and have also become known as the 7%-38%-55%
Rule, for the relative impact of words, tone of voice, and body language when
speaking. Mehrabian also constructed a number of psychological measures
including the Arousal Seeking Tendency Scale.
Elements of communication Sender–encoder
Message Channel
Medium Receiver–decoder
Feedback In his studies, Mehrabian comes to two
conclusions. First, that there are basically three elements in any
face-to-face communication: Words
Tone of voice Nonverbal behaviour
Secondly, the non-verbal elements are particularly important for communicating
feelings and attitude, especially when they are incongruent: if words disagree
with the tone of voice and nonverbal behaviour, people tend to believe the
tonality and nonverbal behaviour. It is not the case that non-verbal
elements in all senses convey the bulk of the message, even though this is how
his conclusions are sometimes misinterpreted. For instance, when
delivering a lecture or presentation, the textual content of the lecture is
delivered entirely verbally, but the non-verbal cues are very important in
conveying the speaker's attitude towards what they are saying, notably their
belief or conviction. Attitudes and congruence
According to Mehrabian, the three elements account differently for our
liking for the person who puts forward a message concerning their feelings: words
account for 7%, tone of voice accounts for 38%, and body language accounts for
55% of the liking. For effective and meaningful
communication about emotions, these three parts of the message need to
support each other - they have to be "congruent". In case of any
incongruence, the receiver of the message might be irritated by two
messages coming from two different channels, giving cues in two different
directions. The following example should help
illustrate incongruence in verbal and non-verbal communication.
Verbal: "I do not have a problem with you!"
Non-verbal: person avoids eye-contact, looks anxious, has a closed body
language, etc. It becomes more likely that the receiver
will trust the predominant form of communication, which to Mehrabian's
findings is the non-verbal impact of tone+gestures, rather than the literal
meaning of the words. This is known as "the 7%-38%-55% Rule".
It is important to say that in the respective study, Mehrabian conducted
experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes, and that the
above, disproportionate influence of tone of voice and body language becomes
effective only when the situation is ambiguous. Such ambiguity appears mostly
when the words spoken are inconsistent with the tone of voice or body language
of the speaker. Misinterpretation
This "7%-38%-55% rule" has been overly interpreted in such a way, that some
people claim that in any communication situation, the meaning of a message was
being transported mostly by non-verbal cues, not by the meaning of words. This
generalization from the initially very specific conditions in his experiments
is the common mistake made with regard to Mehrabian's rule. On his website,
Mehrabian clearly states: "Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38%
Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking. Please note that this and other equations
regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from
experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes. Unless a
communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations
are not applicable. Also see references 286 and 305 in Silent Messages – these
are the original sources of my findings."
Criticism The "7%-38%-55%" rule is based on two
studies reported in the 1967 papers "Decoding of Inconsistent
Communications" and "Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication
in Two Channels". Both dealt with the communication of positive or negative
emotions via single spoken words, like "dear" or "terrible". The first study
compared the relative importance of the semantic meaning of the word with the
tone of voice, and found that the latter was much more influential. The second
study dealt with facial expressions and vocal tone, and found that the relative
contributions of the two communication channels had the ratio 3:2. Mehrabian
then combined the results of the two studies to obtain the ratio 7:38:55.
There are several limitations of the study's applicability to real life,
which are largely ignored when the study is now cited outside a scientific
context and contribute to the misinterpretation above. First, it is
based on the judgment of the meaning of single tape of recorded words, i.e., a
very artificial context. Second, the figures are obtained by combining
results from two different studies which are inappropriately combined. Third, it
relates only to the communication of positive versus negative emotions.
Fourth, it relates only to women, as men did not participate in the study. Fifth,
other types of nonverbal communication, e.g., body posture, were not included in
the studies. Since then, other studies have analyzed
the relative contributions of verbal and nonverbal signals under more
naturalistic situations. One in 1970, using video tapes shown to the subjects,
analyzed the communication of submissive/dominant attitude and found
that all types of non-verbal cues combined – especially body posture – had
4.3 times the effect of verbal cues. On the other hand, another in 1992, dealing
with the communication of happy/sad mood, found that hearing words spoken in
a "flat" voice was about 4 times more influential than facial expressions seen
in a film with no sound. Thus, different studies may reach very different
conclusions dependent on methodology. See also
PAD emotional state model Bandwagon Effect
References Further reading
Mehrabian, Albert. Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and
Attitudes. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. ISBN 0-534-00910-7.
Mehrabian, Albert. Nonverbal Communication. Chicago, IL:
Aldine-Atherton. ISBN 0-202-30966-5. External links
Albert Mehrabian's web site Analysis of misconceptions about
Mehrabian's research Review of post-Mehrabian research and
findings Professor Emeritus, Department of
Psychology, UCLA