by Alan Jones
An often quoted study by Albert Mehrabian Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA), is his findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes known as the 7%-38%-55% Rule.
7 Percent of the meaning of a communications is in the words, 38 percent in the tonality and 55 percent in the general body language.
Mehrabian’s rule is quoted in communication seminars, sales training, human resources etc. as some amazing psychological fact. Is it fact, fiction or both? In my view it is mainly fiction with perhaps a little bit of fact when taken in context and it has been widely taken out of context rendering it useless. Firstly think about speaking to someone who does not speak your language and making them understand you. Hey, this should be very easy according to the Golden Rule, shouldn’t it? After all only seven percent of all meaning in communication is the words, isn’t it? Go one better, speak to someone who knows a few words in your language like yes, no and no understand and explain something complex. I think you get the scenario, you know the time when you are making hand gestures to emulate a fish swimming in the sea to the waiter to let them know you want fish and chips and end up getting grilled snake instead. Your hand gesture of a fish was seen by them as a snake.
A large portion of communication is done through words with little of no emotion, we call it chit chat. What Mehrabian was pointing out is that possibly 93 percent of the emotion of an utterance is delivered by the tone of voice and the body language and even this is open to misinterpretation. Try a small experiment yourself, get a friend of the opposite sex to interpret the meaning of six words said in different tones emphasizing different words. Ask, “What is this thing called love?” Say it slow with deep philosophical thought in mind, say it fast with something a bit risky in mind or just imagine you have something in your hand that you don’t know what it is and you are just asking the question and the love on the end is just a word like mate or buddy. Hopefully you will find that the communications, all three will have different meanings to your friend and yes this has been done deliberately using tone. However, say the same words to someone who does not speak the language and get their responses through an interpreter and you might get some interesting results.
So yes tone and body language do convey meaning if you know the language. There was an interesting advert for the British Army that showed a British Soldier being confronted by an African who was shouting in his own language in the soldier’s face. The impression was one of aggression and anger. This subsides into smiles, the idea is being cool when confronted by the unknown; in this case language, custom and intent is what we teach you in the Army.
If you want someone to go away, you can in a soft voice say, “Bug off.” They may think you are joking as your tone is not matching your intention. Say, “Bug off” in an aggressive loud tone and look annoyed and they may go away without further question. This is about where tone and body language match or don’t match the intended message which we call congruence.
On balance the 7, 38 – 55 rule is only valid within the context of Albert Mehrabian’s experiment which was very narrow and limited. Think about it for a moment, when you are on the telephone, according to the rule, 55 percent of your communication is lost. You only have the tone and tempo and the words your are using, that would mean that only 43 percent of all telephone calls would be understood. As Judge Judy says, “That’s baloney.”
Also the communication model does not take into account the state of the sender or receiver of the communication at the time. Think about this, you have just been told that your bank have mucked up your account and that your salary was not credited to your account last month so you can’t get any money out of your account and they also inform you your car insurance was not renewed. Your next door neighbour knocks on your door to tell you that the refuse collection lorry has just run into your old car and it is a total write off and you know your car is not insured. Just think how you would be feeling. Now imagine that in between the call from your bank and your neighbor knocking to tell you about your old car, you had another call from a friend who informs you that they have won the lottery and they are going to give you £100,000. Then your neighbour knocks to tell about your car being totaled. Now you might just start laughing, because you wanted to get rid of the old banger anyway. Also your neighbour may think you have gone mad. Same words different, states.
Or we could just take if back to the simple NLP Maxim or operating principal, “The meaning of a communication is the response it gets no matter how it was intended.”
At Empowerment Trainings and Talisman Trainings we teach calibrating of the response you get to your communications and how to make your communications more congruent with the message you want to convey to be better understood.
When you next hear someone give the 7, 38, 55 rule ask them where the evidence is and for them to prove it. Most won’t even know who originated the rule let alone the how it was arrived at.
Yes tone and body language, facial expression, gestures and body distance in a face to face communication have an effect but that effect is also dependent on the states of the communicators, sender and receiver, and context. Just ask yourself how many times you have either said something or heard something and taken it the wrong way?
A model or a theory are just that a model and a theory; some are more useful than others and non of them are reality, whatever reality is or is not.
Empowerment Trainings Wish for Good Fortune to you
“May you always keep an open mind as truths are out and in there”
