Inflated and deflated statistics about nonverbal communication, voice, and words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I ran across some articles that reported a set of percentages (shown above via a fancy 3-d bar chart) which I had not seen before. For example, an article by Corporate Communication Experts titled 9 Public Speaking Statistics We All Should Know claimed (as #4):

 

“The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus found that when people are speaking, approximately 7% of the message comes from the words, 36% of the message comes from your voice, and 57% of the message come from your nonverbal communication.”

 

It was also in another article at B&FT Online on September 12, 2022 titled Insights with Dzigbordi K. Dosoo: Becoming a more effective communicator. And it was in a blog post by Sakshi Shukla at ADP List on June 16, 2022 titled How to overcome the fear of public speaking?, an undated post by Eisha Gul at the Weshare blog titled 41+ Public Speaking Statistics You Should Know (as #8), and another undated post by Kevin Brown at MightyAlly titled The second (overlooked) side of communications: interpersonal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 57% for nonverbal communication is slightly higher than the well-known 55% (and the 36% slightly lower than the 38%) reported by Albert Mehrabian back in the early 1970s - and shown above via a second bar chart. I blogged about it back in July 25, 2009 in a post titled Bullfighting the Mehrabian Myth, and also on February 18, 2019 in another post titled Is your donut chart sending the wrong signals? Philip Yaffe discussed it in an article at Ubiquity ACM on October 2011 titled The 7% Rule – fact, fiction, or misunderstanding. John Cadley also discussed it briefly in another brief article on page 30 in the October 2020 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Watch what you’re saying.

 

Where had that slightly inflated version with 57% rather than 55% for nonverbal communication come from? My search at Google Books revealed that it appeared back in 2010 (almost four decades after Mehrabian) as the last paragraph on page 55 of a book by Paul Deslauriers titled The Grassroute Guide where he said:

 

“Studies have shown that words impact interpersonal communication less than one might guess. One study went so far as to conclude that only 7% of what a person takes away from an interaction is attributed to the words used, while 57% of what is communicated is attributed to body language and 36% to voice tone. Body language and voice tone are expressions of the energy behind the words, which can account for 93% of the communication’s impact.”

 

I suspect that Mr. Deslauriers incorrectly recalled the 55% but then wrote it down without going back to check Mehrabian. He didn’t mention either UCLA or Mehrabian, so those who read his book might not have known where to look to check his numbers.

 

Once those incorrect numbers were out, they got repeated by uncritical writers another decade later, who didn’t bother to check back to the original source.