Well, the Don Quixote of the blogosphere (that's me) continues to tilt against the windmills of the world. Anyone who knows me (but who REALLY knows me? I have a secret life that involves azaleas, model railroading, and nipple rings) also knows that I have "had it up to here," as they say, with people who purport to know about nonverbal communication. Dr. Phil actually told Larry King on the air (on Larry King Live) that "communication is 93 percent nonverbal." Dr. Phil was spreading (like cheap manure) the most famous set of false statistics in my field: that the meaning in a message is "7 percent verbal, 38 percent vocal, and 55 percent facial." As I have demonstrated in two different articles (I will spare you THOSE details), these numbers are wrong, misleading, bogus, faux, and any other synonym you can provide.
Enter the Star Tribune, which, on May 5, had as its lead article in its "Source" (variety) section, "Bodies at work." Big 48-point headline. Big colorful graphics. And an article that begins with a big, big lie. Alison Grant, the Newhouse News Service writer, tells us in the 4th paragraph that "A classic 1971 study by UCLA psychologist Albert Mehrabian showed that less than 10 percent of what audience members remembered from a speaker was verbal. About a third of the impact came from tone of voice. The rest, more than half the recall, involved body language--gestures, facial expressions, posture, movements." That prompted me to send the newspaper this letter:
Dear Star Tribune:
It is often painful to read about "nonverbal communication" from people who claim to have knowledge about the subject but really don't. In the Source section of the May 5 Star Tribune ("Bodies at work," by Newhouse News Service writer Alison Grant), it is stated that "A classic 1971 study by UCLA psychologist Albert Mehrabian showed that less than 10 percent of what audience members remembered from a speaker was verbal," implying that roughly 90 percent of a message's meaning is nonverbal. That is simply not true.
First, the two studies that arrived at these numbers are from 1967, not 1971. Second, the key study involved only 37 female psychology majors at UCLA reacting to a situation that essentially forced these women to pay more attention to the nonverbal message because the verbal stimulus was limited to but one word: the word "maybe." Third, the study was not a test of what "audience members remembered," but how they judged the feelings of the speaker. And with only one word to react to--"maybe"--it should come as no surprise that these laboratory subjects paid more attention to the speaker's tone of voice and facial expression to determine the speaker's feelings. There are other inaccuracies in this article as well about Mehrabian's line of research, but I will leave it at that for now.
The bottom line is this: there is no magical formula that can precisely express the relative importance of the verbal and nonverbal messages in any given situation. The percentages from the Mehrabian research are widely cited, but they are a type of "urban legend." And if you don't believe me when I say that words can count for more than 10 percent of the total meaning in a message, try calling your best friend a "big fat selfish pig" in a very calm voice with a gentle smile on your face and see if they actually pay more attention to "body language."
David Lapakko, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication Studies
Augsburg College
So there, I say! This letter did not meet the Star Tribune's high standards and was not published. But the letter does meet my standards (read: none whatsoever). Once again the local newspaper cannot stop me, although I'm beginning to develop a little psychological complex. I hope I am not turning into that slightly deranged guy you see in our urban centers, aimlessly walking about and muttering to any stranger who will make eye contact with him--and even any stranger who won't! I may be 93 percent crazy, but I hang on to that 7 percent of the time when I can be normal and lucid. Pass my meds over to me, please!
No comments:
Post a Comment