Some time back on a forum I use there was a thread about the richness of communication and how it is useful to recognise that when online we cannot see or hear the people we are exchanging with and sometimes this leads to misunderstandings. The richness of human communication is often compromised when only the written word is used. This is of course a fair point and we should all be considered in our use of language when communicating online and in general.
However this was followed by someone stating ‘I agree as words are only 7% of our communication 
’.
No doubt many of you have come across this gem of knowledge. If you have done some NLP training or any other course of study involving communication skills, be it for business, therapy or such like it is possible you have heard it, perhaps even said it. I know I have in the past.
Just in case you haven’t, it is said that in normal face to face communication we receive communication through three channels; body language, voice tone and words. Apparently 55% of what we communicate is done through body language, 38% through tone of voice and just 7% through words. This is of course interesting to those for whom effective communication is paramount in their work life and of general interest to us all.
This information is so often repeated as ‘fact’ that it seems to be accepted as true by nearly everyone you ask and just like the phenomenon of ‘100 Monkey Syndrome’ and myth that ‘LSD stays in the body for years’ or ‘Eskimo’s have 100 words for snow’ has dropped into the public consciousness without much examination.
The next time you hear it, ask the person if they know where they heard it or if they know where it comes from. The chances are they will not know, they just repeat the information and expect it to slip under the radar unchallenged – which it normally does. The person saying it appears to know something fascinating and interesting about human nature and the person hearing it feels buoyed by the fact that they already know it. It is as if simply knowing and repeating the information makes one better at communicating or at least interesting and knowledgeable.
The 7/38/55 rule was exposed as untrue by Dr. ‘Buzz’ Johnson, in his article published originally in Anchor Point way back in July 1994 and even the person that started the idea has stated that t say words represent 7% of our communication is untrue and he is constantly misquoted.
So where does the 7/38/55 % rule come from?
Albert Mehrabian, a researcher interested in non verbal communication, was the original source of the theory. He carried out numerous studies in the late 1960’s in this area and published some of the results of his work in two books ‘Silent Messages’ 1971 and ‘Nonverbal Communications’ 1972. The first study that relates to the 7/38/55 rule was in fact very simple.
It consisted of three female voices who had recorded the word ‘maybe’ while altering their voice tone to communicate different attitudes (variations of like or dislike). The tapes were listened to by 17 female subjects who imagined the word was being said to someone else and had to try and guess what attitude was being communicated.
Next, black and white photographs of three female who were attempting to use facial expressions to communicate like, neutrality, and dislike towards another person. Then photos were shown to the same 17 subjects with the instructions that they would be shown the pictures and at the same time hear a recording of the word "maybe" spoken in different tones of voice. "You are to imagine that the person you see and hear (A) is looking at and talking to another person (B)." For each presentation they were to indicate on a rating scale what they thought A's attitude was toward B. The conclusions from this experiment were that the facial components were stronger than the vocal by the ratio of 3/2 as referred to earlier.
They integrated this study with another one. Rather than re-write this information I am copying ‘Buzz’s’ comments from his Anchor Point article here.
‘This second study was reported in the Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 1967, Vol. 6, No. 1, pg. 109-114 entitled, Decoding Of Inconsistent Communications. Here they dealt with inconsistent communication of attitude in two components; tone of voice and nine different words. Three words were selected that seemed to indicate a positive attitude, "honey," "thanks," and "dear." Three were neutral, "maybe," "really," and "oh," and three were negative, "don't," "brute," and "terrible."
Two female speakers were employed to read each of the nine words with each of the three tones, positive, neutral, or disliking of an imaginary addressee. These were recorded on tape which was then listened to by 30
They were instructed to imagine that each word was being said by one person to another and to judge what the speaker's attitude was towards the imaginary recipient. One-third were told to ignore the information conveyed by the meaning of the words and to pay attention only to the tone. Another third were told to ignore the tone and pay attitude only to the meaning of the words. The last third were told to utilize both the tone and the content’.
The first study found that when subjects used just the vocal tone and the content to discern the speaker’s attitude, they relied more on tone than content.
In the second study, significant effects of both facial expression and tone were found when subjects attempted to judge the attitude of the hypothetical speakers.
In the discussion of this second study, Mehrabian proposed that the results of the two studies can be combined. From this he concluded that judgments of attitude from inconsistent messages involving single words spoken with intonation are primarily based on the attitude carried in the tonal component. He suggested that the combined effect of simultaneous verbal, vocal and facial attitude communications is a weighted sum of their independent effects — with the coefficients of .07, .38, and .55, respectively.
The research was flawed as noted by the experimental team for a number of reasons.
Firstly the experiments were only concerned with communication of attitude. The results are not applicable across the full spectrum of communication. Secondly the experiment was based on single word being used. This does not constitute normal communication and as far as the experimenters were concerned ‘can only be safely extended to situations in which no additional information about the communicator-addressee relationship is available’.
Thirdly the effect does not relate to content transfer simply to attitude communicated.
This third point is where I think the findings are most often misquoted. Many people who quote the 7/38/55 rule seem to be saying it is about content and that by ‘mind reading’ tone or body language you can reveal more content.
Mehrabian himself has this to say about the use of his coefficient, ‘My findings are often misquoted. Please remember that all of my findings on inconsistent or redundant communications dealt with communications of attitudes. This is the realm in which they are applicable. Clearly it is absurd to say that the verbal portion of all communication constitutes only 7% of the message….anytime we communicate abstract relationships (physical directions, technical information, simple descriptions), clearly 100% of the entire communication is verbal. (Mehrabian, 1995, Three Cheers for Language, D. Lappakko, 1999, Communication Education).
However there does seem to be some valuable kernel of truth in the findings so rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater lets look at that statement from Mehrabian.
‘remember that all of my findings on inconsistent or redundant communications dealt with communications of attitudes. This is the realm in which they are applicable.’ Mehrabian.
The point of value in that statement is about congruence in communication channels and not whether one channel is more important than another. Clearly if we are saying ‘yes’ but our tone is a tremulous ‘no’ and are head is shaking, the message is clear. Incongruence in communication channels is what is causing the problem, not dominance of one over another. The research should not limit the value we put on words but instead accentuate the effort we put into congruence in how we express ourselves.
‘Clearly it is absurd to say that the verbal portion of all communication constitutes only 7% of the message….’ Mehrabian.
In a nutshell most of what we communicate is NOT done through tone and body language it is done through words. Tone and body language add colour to those words and can impact on ‘attitude’ communicated. However words remain the higher-level communication system. Without them tone and body language do not have much of a ‘vehicle’ to travel on/with. This is especially so when communicating abstract ideas and beliefs, plans, concepts and meanings and technical information. As someone who is aware of multi-level communication, yes use your instinct and any intuitive sense you have of incongruence not as a cue to ignore what is being said in words or to guess what might be being said but to ask further questions if desired until congruence is achieving communication is satisfactory.
So online bearing in mind that often we are dealing in the abstract, nowhere more so than the hypnosis and nlp forums, all we have is words use them wisely.
To quote one well known expert in communication
"Are you aware of the way in which you use
words?" I certainly am, and I want to emphasize the
importance of that awareness to all of you. In
hypnosis you are going to use words to influence the
psychological life of your patient today; you are going to use
words to influence his organic life today; you are
going to also influence his psychological and organic
life twenty years from now. So you had better know
what you are saying. You had better be willing to
reflect upon the words you use, to wonder what their
meanings are, and to seek out and understand their many
associations.
Milton Erickson - Ericksonian Approaches
The original article from Dr Buzz Johnson can be found here
http://www.coachteam.no/Documents/MytenOmNonverbalKommunikasjon.pdf
Oh and no, the Inuit really do not have 100 words or snow!
http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html
Best regards,
Anthony Jacquin
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