73750

Shared by: Lisa Kaskel Kaskel

Subject: What Do We Remember?

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The Study
Albert Mehrabrian, Ph.. Of UCLA was the originator of the 73855
theory. He speaks of it in
two books, Silent Messages published in 1971, and Nonverbal Communications published in
1972. In these two books, he refers to research projects which were published in various
professional journals. I will get to the journals in more detail later, but first let''''s look at
some of his statements from one of the books.
From Chapter 3 of Silent Messages we find that the numbers 73855
expressed as
percentages have to do only with what he calls the resolution of inconsistent messages, or
to put it in NLP terms, incongruencies. He also states that there are very few things that can
be communicated nonverbally.
He initially was investigating liking/ disliking which he later
generalized into feelings. In speaking with him by phone in March, 1994, he stated that his
findings and inferences were not meant to be applied to normal communications. They were
of very limited application.
Let me paraphrase some of his thoughts from page 134 toward the end of that book.
Clearly, it is not always possible to substitute actions for words and therefore, what are the
limitations of actions as instruments of communication? If you''''ve ever played charades, you
know that words and language are by far the most effective way of expressing complex and
abstract ideas. The ideas contained in Silent Messages, and most other books for that
matter, couldn''''t be done with actions. A very important thing to remember about the
differences between words and actions is that actions only permit the expression of a
limited set of things; namely, primary feelings and attitudes.
The Details
Now let''''s examine in more detail the specifics of a couple of his experiments from which
some people have made some rather sweeping and inaccurate generalizations. From the
Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1967, Vol. 31. No. 3, pg. 248252
is a report entitled
Inference Of Attitudes From Nonverbal Communication In Two Channels. This study was
designed to investigate the decoding of inconsistent and consistent communications of
attitude in facial and vocal channels. The experimental team found that the facial
component received approximately 3/2 the weight received by the vocal component. You
can readily see that this roughly corresponds to the 38% and 55% figures mentioned
earlier.
You may be wondering how this study was conducted. There was only one word used. That
word was "maybe," selected for it''''s apparent neutrality. Three female speakers were tape
recorded saying that word wile varying their tone of voice so as to communicate three
different attitudes (i.e., like, neutral, and dislike) towards an imagined addressee. Then the
tapes were listened to by 17 female subjects with instructions to imagine that the speaker is
saying this word to another person and judged by the tones what the speaker''''s attitude is
towards that imaginary addressee. So there was no direct feedback by anyone who was
being addressed. It was a number of thirdparty
listeners who were asked to mindread,
guess, interpret, imagine, etc., how the speaker felt towards someone who wasn''''t even
there and, in fact, didn''''t even exist. There was no way to see or hear the reactions of this
phantom individual, about whom someone was going to make several longlasting
and
powerful speculations.
Next, black and white photographs were taken of three female models as they attempted to
use facial expressions to communicate like, neutrality, and dislike towards another person.
Then photos were shown to the same 17 subjects with the instructions that they would be
shown the pictures and at the same time hear a recording of the word "maybe" spoken in
different tones of voice. "You are to imagine that the person you see and hear (A) is looking
at and talking to another person (B)." For each presentation they were to indicate on a
rating scale what they thought A''''s attitude was toward B. Again, thirdparty
mindreading
with no direct contact with the person addressed, B, because that person was nonexistent.
The conclusions from this experiment were that the facial components were stronger than
the vocal by the ratio of 3/2 as referred to earlier.
An interesting comment that came out of the discussion section indicated that the effect of
redundancy (i.e., consistent attitude communication in two or more channels) is to intensify
the attitude communicated in any one of the component channels. Perhaps this is
something that could be more profitably pursued instead of the denigration of words. Or as
you can see from this particular study, word, not words. And that word was "maybe." It
seems to play words under quite a handicap not much different from playing charades.

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