1. 93% of communication is non-verbal. ↑

metanymous 22 октября 2016, 15:34 в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)

1. 93% of communication is non-verbal.

---

This is one with which I was never comfortable. If it was true then it should be easy to communicate the precise meaning including the 93% without the lowly 7% of verbal communication – try it! Feeling that it is wrong and knowing why is very different. My friend and colleague, Chris Norris, was able to help me when he attended an Advanced Master Practitioner training which I ran a number of years ago. He knew the name of the source, Mehrabian. Mehrabian (1971) wrote a very interesting book about how we communicate and perceive feelings. On page 77 he states the generalisation from their findings on liking to feelings more generally:

---

“Generalising, we can say that people's implicit behaviour has more bearing than their words on communicating feelings or attitudes to others. So we have rewritten our equation for any feeling.

---

Total feeling = 7% verbal feeling + 38% vocal feeling + 55% facial feeling”

---

He later goes on in page 79 to caution:

---

“Incidentally, we should be careful to note that these assertions about the disproportionate contribution of implicit, relative to verbal, cues is limited to feelings (pleasure, arousal, dominance) and like-dislike. Obviously, implicit expressions are

---

not always more important than words. In fact, implicit cues are ineffective for communicating most referents denoted by words (for example, "I'll see you tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 pm", "I was wearing my new velour suit yesterday", or "x + y = z")”.

---

There are three points of note here. The first is obviously that when the percentages quoted are applied to all communication and not just how we perceive whether we are liked we are making a gross error. The second is that the details of them are often changed from vocal and facial to non-verbal movements. The third is the use of these percentages to sell non-verbal communication skills training. This is a dishonest sales practice whether done knowingly or unknowingly.