A look at non-verbal communication
5th September 2006 by Carol Kinsey Goman
I’m researching nonverbal communication for a new book I’m writing. Came across this often (mis)quoted study:
Professor Albert Mehrabian at UCLA conducted the classic research on the impact of different channels of communication. His finding:
* 7% of meaning is communicated by spoken words
* 38% of meaning is communicated by voice tone
* 55% of meaning is communicated by nonverbal gestures
Mehrabian was studying the communication of feelings and attitudes. Obviously, you can’t watch people speaking in a foreign language and understand 93 percent of what is being communicated. But you can be assured that their nonverbal gestures reveal more about someone’s real motives and feelings than anything they might say.
Here’s why.
Manners and poise may be consciously learned, but facial expression, eye blinking, leg crossing and nervous tapping are difficult to consistently repress. Nonverbal gestures tend to reveal inner character and emotions – fear, honestly, joy, indecision, frustration, and much more. The tiniest gesture, like the way someone stands or enters the room, can speak volumes about their confidence, self-worth, and credibility.
I’d be interested in hearing about your experience with this topic.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:30 am
My tv gets very few channels, and sometimes, hard as it may be to believe, poker is the best show on.
And for those looking for an excuse to watch, studying body language is as good a reason as any.
And since, according to the announcers on the poker show, body language sucks in the opponents, it stands to reason it would apply in other business ventures.
Depending onhow you define “body language,” there’s lots to do in PR.
Broadly defined … Monday we’re arranging for a cleint — a lawyer — to be photographed in saftey books and hardhat, on a construciton site. Prob ably face on, feet a foot apart, looking straight at the camera.
The best portraint of another client — best in the sense of accomplishing a gol — is a “stare them down” head shot. Yesterday, teaching media relations, I spent most of my time seated, with maybe a one-third split between leaning back, sitting upright, and leaning forward.
And my partner, who led about a third of the discussion, did it all while standing.
It’s all showbiz.
BAK
September 8th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Well, maybe it’s better than phrenology or graphology or astrology - but not much. I have asked quite a few people about their body language, and their perception of mine, and we were nearly always wrong. The experts tell us that leg-crossing means X or Y - but for me it always means, “Damn, this chair is uncomfortable.” Fiddling with an ear means P or Q - but for me it it usually, “My ear itches.”
Anything that can miss the mark so often is to me not science.
Stan Freberg would have had something to say about Mehrabian’s work, which would tell us that radio automatically has a failing grade before it even starts. Feh.
Mehrabian’s numbers are quoted everywhere, and I think they are a crock.
I’m sorry if the lack of nonverbal clues or voice tone leaves you able to understand less than half of my meaning.
Sure, opera doesn’t work if you read the libretto - but the newspaper does. The need for extra richness depends on how well the message fits the medium, and perhaps on the extent to which the message can be read ambiguously. For example, “Love your shirt!” can be read many ways, and needs a boost, but “Today is September 8″ can’t and doesn’t.
September 17th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
The research you quote was published in a book entitled Silent Messages in 1971. And you’re absolutely correct. It is probably the single most misquoted statistic on body language in modern history.
Professor Mehrabian was concerned with the consistency between the words spoken and the person speaking them as a means of determining whether the message is believable. Unfortunately, people have examined that isolated statistic (which does not really appear as you have quoted it here) and said: “Let’s control how someone looks and how they sound to create the right image, and they will be believable.”
This, of course, creates exactly the opposite effect.
I think we need to look to psycholinguistics to gain greater insight into how body language helps someone both think and communicate. Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago has written an excellent book, Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think, that is based on her research.
She believes the act of gesturing helps promote spatial thinking and that attempts to stifle gestures inhibit someone’s ability to think.
As a media training consultant and presentation coach, I want my clients to be able to think clearly when answering questions from reporters and delivering ideas to groups. And I applaud the article in the Wall Street Journal in which she is quoted as saying:
“At the very least, we ought to stop telling people not to move their hands when they talk.”
September 19th, 2006 at 7:59 am
I think that going back to Mehrabian’s original research (1968, 1981) would be beneficial. He very carefully manipulated how one (1) word, “maybe,” had an impact on the communication. That he found 93% accounted for by nonverbal subcodes shouldn’t be a surprise. A better estimate is offered by Ray Birdwhistell (1970), who suggested that actual nonverbal contribution was about 68%, or basically two-thirds of what we “say” or communicate is based on nonverbal subcodes.
This distinction between “variance accounted for” has been known to communication researchers for years. I am continually amazed that people do not go to communication researchers for communication studies (Mehrabian was a psychologist; Birdwhistell an anthropologist, but both contributed greatly to our understanding of verbal [as opposed to vocal] and nonverbal communication.) Other subcodes that communication researchers have examined include: kinesics (”body language”), physical appearance (to include body shape, clothing, artifacts), proxemics (personal space and territoriality), paralanguage or vocalics (aspects of the voice other than words), and haptics (touch or “zero proxemics).
For more, see: M. L. Hickson, D. W. Stacks, & N.J. Moore, Nonverbal Communication: Studies and Applications, 4th edition (Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, 2004).
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:24 am
Thank you for your opinions and suggestions - and especially for your research references. if you have any more, please send them along.
October 30th, 2006 at 10:14 am
So glad to see not everyone is buying the “perverted” conventional wisdom of that original study!
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
Here’s another research reference, one great book I just completed as part of my undergraduate degree in my interpersonal communications course, it’s called “Communicating: The Multiple Modes of Human Interconnection” by Ruth Finnegan. Finnegan takes you from communicating through sound to communicating through space and time. I hope this helps.