Albert Mehrabian

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Albert Mehrabian (born 1939) is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. [1] [2] He is best known for his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages.

Contents

Early life and career

Mehrabian, born in 1939 to an Armenian family in Iran, initially trained as an engineer, [1] but gained renown for his research on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal communication. In addition to his scholarly work, Mehrabian developed several psychological assessment tools, including the Arousal Seeking Tendency Scale. [3] His most famous contribution is the "7%-38%-55% Rule," which highlights the varying impact of words, tone of voice, and body language in conveying feelings and attitudes. However, these findings have been misquoted and misinterpreted throughout human communication seminars worldwide. [4]

Attitudes and congruence

According to Mehrabian, [5] when a person communicates feelings, the three elements of the message—words, tone of voice, and facial expression—contribute differently to how much others like the person. Specifically, words account for 7%, tone of voice for 38%, and facial expression for 55% of the liking.

For effective communication about emotions, these three parts of the message need to align or be "congruent." If there is any incongruence, where the verbal and non-verbal cues contradict each other, the receiver might be confused or irritated by the conflicting messages.

The following example should help illustrate incongruence in verbal and non-verbal communication.

It becomes more likely that the receiver will trust the predominant form of communication, which to Mehrabian's findings is the non-verbal impact of tone+facial expression (38% + 55%), rather than the literal meaning of the words (7%). This is known as "the 7%-38%-55% Rule".

It's important to note that Mehrabian's experiments focused specifically on communications of feelings and attitudes (like-dislike). The disproportionate influence of tone of voice and facial expression becomes significant mainly in ambiguous situations, where the words spoken are inconsistent with the tone of voice or facial expression of the speaker.

Misinterpretation

The "7%-38%-55%" rule has often been misinterpreted, leading to the claim that in any communication, the meaning of a message is conveyed mainly by non-verbal cues rather than by the meaning of words. However, this generalization stems from the specific conditions of Mehrabian's experiments and is a common mistake in applying his rule. For further details, references 286 and 305 in Silent Messages are cited as the original sources of Mehrabian's findings. On his website, Mehrabian clarifies the following equation:

Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking" and other similar equations were derived from experiments specifically focused on the communication of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like–dislike). Therefore, unless a communicator is discussing their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable. [6]

Criticism

The "7%-38%-55%" rule is based on two studies reported in the 1967 papers "Decoding of Inconsistent Communications", [7] and "Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels". [8] Both studies focused on the communication of positive or negative emotions using single spoken words, such as "dear" or "terrible." The first study compared the relative importance of the semantic meaning of the word with the tone of voice and found that the latter was much more influential. The second study dealt with facial expressions (shown in black-and-white photographs) and vocal tone (as heard in a tape recording) and found that the relative contributions of the two communication channels had a ratio of 3:2. Mehrabian combined the results of these two studies to derive the ratio 7:38:55 for the relative importance of words, tone of voice, and facial expressions in conveying feelings and attitudes.

The study's applicability to real-life situations has several limitations that are often overlooked when the study is cited outside of a scientific context, contributing to potential misinterpretation. First, the study is based on the interpretation of the meaning of a single tape of recorded words, which creates a very artificial context. Second, the figures are derived from combining results from two different studies, which may not be appropriate. Third, the study only relates to the communication of positive versus negative emotions. Fourth, the study only included women, as men did not participate, which limits its generalizability. Fifth, other forms of nonverbal communication, such as body posture, were not considered in the studies. These limitations should be considered when interpreting the findings of the study.

Subsequent studies have examined the relative impact of verbal and nonverbal signals in more natural settings. For example, a study in 1970 used video tapes to analyze the communication of submissive/dominant attitudes and found that all types of nonverbal cues, [9] particularly body posture, had a 4.3 times greater impact than verbal cues. In contrast, a study in 1992 focused on the communication of happy/sad moods and discovered that hearing words spoken in a "flat" voice was approximately four times more influential than facial expressions seen in a silent film. [10] These findings highlight the variability in conclusions that different studies may reach, depending on their methodologies.

See also

Related Research Articles

Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Body language</span> Type of nonverbal communication

Body language is a type of nonverbal communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Although body language is an important part of communication, most of it happens without conscious awareness. In social communication, body language often complements verbal communication. Nonverbal communication has a significant impact on doctor-patient relationships, as it affects how open patients are with their doctor. Having open body language, which is typically identified as having a relaxed posture, nodding, eye contact can contribute to patients having higher levels of trust with their doctors. According to, W.Y. Kee, patients who had a doctor that avoided eye contact by looking at a screen or had negative facial expressions contributed to patients feeling dissatisfied after their visit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pathognomy</span> Study of expressed emotions

Pathognomy is "a 'semiotik' of the transient features of someone's face or body, be it voluntary or involuntary". Examples of this can be laughter and winking to the involuntary such as sneezing or coughing. By studying the features or expressions, there is then an attempt to infer the mental state and emotion felt by the individual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microexpression</span> Innate result of voluntary, involuntary, and conflicting emotional responses

A microexpression is a facial expression that only lasts for a short moment. It is the innate result of a voluntary and an involuntary emotional response occurring simultaneously and conflicting with one another, and occurs when the amygdala responds appropriately to the stimuli that the individual experiences and the individual wishes to conceal this specific emotion. This results in the individual very briefly displaying their true emotions followed by a false emotional reaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonverbal communication</span> Interpersonal communication through wordless (mostly visual) cues

Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact (oculesics), body language (kinesics), social distance (proxemics), touch (haptics), voice, physical environments/appearance, and use of objects. When communicating, we utilize nonverbal channels as means to convey different messages or signals, whereas others can interpret these message. The study of nonverbal communication started in 1872 with the publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. Darwin began to study nonverbal communication as he noticed the interactions between animals such as lions, tigers, dogs etc. and realized they also communicated by gestures and expressions. For the first time, nonverbal communication was studied and its relevance noted. Today, scholars argue that nonverbal communication can convey more meaning than verbal communication.

Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously.

Unconsciouscommunication is the subtle, unintentional, unconscious cues that provide information to another individual. It can be verbal or it can be non-verbal. Some psychologists instead use the term honest signals because such cues are involuntary behaviors that often convey emotion whereas body language can be controlled. Many decisions are based on unconscious communication, which is interpreted and created in the right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere is dominant in perceiving and expressing body language, facial expressions, verbal cues, and other indications that have to do with emotion but it does not exclusively deal with the unconscious.

Kinesics is the interpretation of body communication such as facial expressions and gestures, nonverbal behavior related to movement of any part of the body or the body as a whole. The equivalent popular culture term is body language, a term Ray Birdwhistell, considered the founder of this area of study, neither used nor liked.

Dyssemia is a difficulty with receptive and/or expressive nonverbal communication. The word comes from the Greek roots dys (difficulty) and semia (signal). The term was coined by psychologists Marshall Duke and Stephen Nowicki in their 1992 book, Helping The Child Who Doesn't Fit In, to decipher the hidden dimensions of social rejection. These difficulties go beyond problems with body language and motor skills. Dyssemic persons exhibit difficulties with the acquisition and use of nonverbal cues in interpersonal relationships. "A classic set of studies by Albert Mehrabian showed that in face-to-face interactions, 55 percent of the emotional meaning of a message is expressed through facial, postural, and gestural means, and 38 percent of the emotional meaning is transmitted through the tone of voice. Only seven percent of the emotional meaning is actually expressed with words." Dyssemia represents the social dysfunction aspect of nonverbal learning disorder.

Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one's knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception is understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.

Non-verbal leakage is a form of non-verbal behavior that occurs when a person verbalizes one thing, but their body language indicates another, common forms of which include facial movements and hand-to-face gestures. The term "non-verbal leakage" got its origin in literature in 1968, leading to many subsequent studies on the topic throughout the 1970s, with related studies continuing today.

Body-to-body communication is a way of communicating with others through the use of nonverbal communication, without using speech or verbalization. It can include body language, facial expressions, and other bodily gestures in order to communicate with others without the need of verbal communication. Body-to-body communication accounts for postures, body language, physical touch, nonverbal language, and other bodily gestures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Posture (psychology)</span> Aspect of nonverbal communication

In humans, posture can provide a significant amount of important information through nonverbal communication. Psychological studies have also demonstrated the effects of body posture on emotions. This research can be traced back to Charles Darwin's studies of emotion and movement in humans and animals. Currently, many studies have shown that certain patterns of body movements are indicative of specific emotions. Researchers studied sign language and found that even non-sign language users can determine emotions from only hand movements. Another example is the fact that anger is characterized by forward whole body movement. The theories that guide research in this field are the self-validation or perception theory and the embodied emotion theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PAD emotional state model</span> Psychological model based on Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance

The PAD emotional state model is a psychological model developed by Albert Mehrabian and James A. Russell to describe and measure emotional states. PAD uses three numerical dimensions, Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance to represent all emotions. Its initial use was in a theory of environmental psychology, the core idea being that physical environments influence people through their emotional impact. It was subsequently used by Peter Lang and colleagues to propose a physiological theory of emotion. It was also used by James A. Russell to develop a theory of emotional episodes. The PA part of PAD was developed into a circumplex model of emotion experience, and those two dimensions were termed "core affect". The D part of PAD was re-conceptualized as part of the appraisal process in an emotional episode. A more fully developed version of this approach is termed the psychological construction theory of emotion.

Cultural communication is the practice and study of how different cultures communicate within their community by verbal and nonverbal means. Cultural communication can also be referred to as intercultural communication and cross-cultural communication. Cultures are grouped together by a set of similar beliefs, values, traditions, and expectations which call all contribute to differences in communication between individuals of different cultures. Cultural communication is a practice and a field of study for many psychologists, anthropologists, and scholars. The study of cultural communication is used to study the interactions of individuals between different cultures. Studies done on cultural communication are utilized in ways to improve communication between international exchanges, businesses, employees, and corporations. Two major scholars who have influenced cultural communication studies are Edward T. Hall and Geert Hofstede. Edward T. Hall, who was an American anthropologist, is considered to be the founder of cultural communication and the theory of proxemics. The theory of proxemics focuses on how individuals use space while communicating depending on cultural backgrounds or social settings. The space in between individuals can be identified in four different ranges. For example, 0 inches signifies intimate space while 12 feet signifies public space. Geert Hofstede was a social psychologist who founded the theory of cultural dimension. In his theory, there are five dimensions that aim to measure differences between different cultures. The five dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, and Chronemics.

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.

Emotions in virtual communication are expressed and understood in a variety of different ways from those in face-to-face interactions. Virtual communication continues to evolve as technological advances emerge that give way to new possibilities in computer-mediated communication (CMC). The lack of typical auditory and visual cues associated with human emotion gives rise to alternative forms of emotional expression that are cohesive with many different virtual environments. Some environments provide only space for text based communication, where emotions can only be expressed using words. More newly developed forms of expression provide users the opportunity to portray their emotions using images.

Mark G. Frank is a communication professor and department chair, and an internationally recognized expert on human nonverbal communication, emotion, and deception. He conducts research and does training on micro expressions of emotion and of the face. His research studies include other nonverbal indicators of deception throughout the rest of the body. He is the Director of the Communication Science Center research laboratory that is located on the North Campus of the University at Buffalo. Under his guidance, a team of graduate researchers conduct experiments and studies for private and government entities. Frank uses his expertise in communication and psychology to assist law enforcement agencies in monitoring both verbal and nonverbal communication.

Nonverbal influence is the act of affecting or inspiring change in others' behaviors and attitudes through tone of voice or body language and other nonverbal cues like facial expression. This act of getting others to embrace or resist new attitudes can be achieved with or without the use of spoken language. Many individuals instinctively associate persuasion with verbal messages. Nonverbal influence emphasizes the persuasive power and influence of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal influence includes appeals to attraction, similarity and intimacy.

Motivation impairment effect (MIE) is a hypothesised behavioral effect relating to the communication of deception. The MIE posits that people who are highly motivated to deceive are less successful in their goal when their speech and mannerisms are observed by the intended audience. This is because their nonverbal cues, such as adaptor gestures, sweating, kinesic behaviors, verbal disfluencies, etc., tend to be more pronounced due to increased stress, cognitive load, and heightened emotional state. There is some disagreement regarding the MIE hypothesis, with a few nonverbal communication scholars arguing that deception should not be examined as separate for senders and receivers, but rather as an integral part of the overall process.

References

  1. 1 2 UCLA College, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, UCLA Archived 2015-09-08 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Mehrabian, Albert (2017). Dr. London, England; New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN   978-1-351-30871-7.
  3. ↑ Boyle, G. J. (1998). Review of Arousal Seeking Tendency Scale. In J. C. Impara and B. S. Plake (Eds.), The thirteenth mental measurements yearbook (pp. 49-50). Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements.
  4. ↑ Hartford, Tim (August 14, 2009). "More or less". BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on October 1, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2020.
  5. ↑ Mehrabian, Albert (1971). Silent Messages (1st ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. ISBN   0-534-00910-7.
  6. ↑ Mehrabian, Albert (2009). ""Silent Messages" – A Wealth of Information About Nonverbal Communication (Body Language)". Personality & Emotion Tests & Software: Psychological Books & Articles of Popular Interest. Los Angeles: self-published. Archived from the original on February 23, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2010.
  7. ↑ Mehrabian, Albert; Wiener, Morton (1967). "Decoding of Inconsistent Communications". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 6 (1): 109–114. doi:10.1037/h0024532. PMID   6032751.
  8. ↑ Mehrabian, Albert; Ferris, Susan R. (1967). "Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels". Journal of Consulting Psychology. 31 (3): 248–252. doi:10.1037/h0024648. PMID   6046577.
  9. ↑ Argyle, Michael; Salter, Veronica; Nicholson, Hilary; Williams, Marylin; Burgess, Philip (1970). "The Communication of Inferior and Superior Attitudes by Verbal and Non-verbal Signals". British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 9 (3): 222–231. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.1970.tb00668.x.
  10. ↑ Hsee, Christopher K.; Hatfield, Elaine; Chemtob, Claude (1992). "Assessments of the Emotional States of Others: Conscious Judgments versus Emotional Contagion". Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 11 (2): 119–128. doi:10.1521/jscp.1992.11.2.119.

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