In 1968, Dr. Albert Merhabian was engaged in social science research at the University of California, Los Angeles. His field of study was called nonverbal communication, what we would describe today as body language.
What Dr. Merhabian is often attributed as saying:
55 % of meaning is derived from body language
38 % of meaning is derived from the tone of voice
and a tiny 7% of meaning is derived from the actual words we use.
This is not what Dr. Mehrabian concluded from his data. Like a game of broken telephone this myth spread widely.
What Dr. Merhabian did say:
Now Professor Emeritus, Dr. Mehrabian spoke to BBC Radio 4 interviewer Tim Harford of “More of Less” about the two research studies he conducted decades earlier.
In the first experiment, Merbrabian instructed a co-researcher to state a single word that would clearly communicate either a positive feeling, neutral or negative feeling states.
- Words to express positive feeling states were: “thanks”, “dear”, “great” and “love”.
- Words to express neutral feeling states were: “maybe”, “really”, “so”, and “what”.
- Words to express negative feeling states were: “don’t”, “terrible”, “brute” and “no”.
In each of these three conditions the researcher only read one word to each subject. The research subject was then asked to guess the emotion behind the word spoken.
Dr. Mehrabian found that when there is a contradiction between word and the tone of voice, it was the tone of voice that had five times the impact compared to the word itself.
With this data in hand, Dr. Mehrabian conducted a second experiment to explore the relationship between tone of voice and facial expression. He concluded that when there was a contradiction between facial expression and tone of voice that the facial expression carried 1.5 times more weight regarding meaning.
Dr. Merhabian published the combined findings from both studies in a book called Silent Message: Implicit communication of emotions and attitudes. He describes the three elements (verbal, vocal and facial expression) in an equation of liking:
Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking
There are limitations in this research
This was a lab experiment. Expression of a single word of emotion and facial expression alone cannot be extrapolated to the rules of communication, in general. Moreover, these findings only apply to communicating about a feeling and attitude.
For communication to be effective, all three parts of language (words, tone of voice and body language) need to be congruent. Consider Martin Luther-King’s, “I Have a Dream” speech, for example. How would Dr. King’s message have been received if he had been shaking his head or hiding his hands so they couldn’t be seen by his audience while declaring “now is the time”?
Verbal communication remains a critical part of meaning creation.
“Words create worlds” is a core tenet within the field of appreciative inquiry. In essence, the verbal language we use and hear shapes our feeling, our thoughts and our experience. Striving to be clear, concise, truthful and kind in all of our conversations is an important goal for change-making.
