The end of a sticky idea? Mehrabian responds...
Our animation has been up on YouTube for just over six weeks and has already been seen by over six thousand people, which is pretty amazing for a niche video about communication. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised because there are plenty of people who've come across the abuse of Albert Mehrabian's formula without ever having heard of the man, or read his research.
Anytime you come across the widely-held belief that spoken communication is mostly non-verbal, you will be sampling a distorted variant of Mehrabian's now infamous statistic, which in its original form states that:
'total liking = 7% verbal liking + 38% vocal liking + 55% facial liking'
But, as our animation shows, Mehrabian's research limited itself to situations where what someone says – e.g. "I like this" – is undermined by the way they say it, and the look on their face as they speak. Unremarkably, Mehrabian concluded that in situations like this when tone of voice and facial expression are inconsistent with what is being said, we tend believe what we see rather than what we hear.
However, since Mehrabian's original search came into the public arena in the late sixties, it has been simplified and distorted beyond recognition. It really took hold when people began writing, saying, and teaching, that in spoken communication 93% of meaning is conveyed through body language – leaving only 7% of the meaning down to the words.
More or less...
On the 3rd of August I emailed a link to our animation to Tim Harford, the presenter of BBC Radio 4's 'More or Less' – a programme that investigates the ways we use numbers, statistics, and measurements. I sent it to him because I felt that the distorted version of Mehrabian's statistic was ripe for investigation.
Tim got straight back to me, saying, he’d take a look. But I heard nothing more from him and forgot all about it. And then last Friday (14th August) the phone rang. It was Martha telling me to switch on the radio because Albert Mehrabian was being interviewed by Tim Harford as we spoke.
Not surprisingly, Mehrabian confirmed everything we say in our animation. His research never set out to prove that communication is primarily non-verbal. Indeed, when Tim Harford asked him directly if 93 percent of communication is non-verbal Mehrabian replied, "Whenever I hear that misquote or misrepresentation of my findings, I cringe."
But – is this the end?
Will this clarification and denial, straight from the horse's mouth, be the final nail in the distorted statistic's coffin? I don't think so. Why? Because it's a really sticky idea.
In their excellent book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath look at why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck. They list a number of characteristics that explain why some ideas persist, even though they are blatantly ridiculous and false.
Mehrabian's distorted statistic shares at least three of the characterisics they identify: it's simple; it's unexpected; and it's credible (because it's based on 'scientific research'!).
Post Script...
One of the great delights of our animation is that it has opened doors for us. We've sent it to people we don't know, and they’ve looked at it, and contacted us. One of those people was Dan Heath, co-author of 'Made to Stick', who emailed us to say that he loved the animation and its message.
I sent him a link to the Albert Mehrabian interview, and I concluded my email to him with the words: "Despite Mehrabian's denial and clarification, we both know that the absurd statistic will continue to flourish because it ticks the boxes of so many sticky criteria!"
© 2009 Martin Shovel
Links:
Watch Busting the Mehrabian Myth on YouTube – and please leave a comment!
Listen to Tim Harford’s interview with Albert Mehrabian on BBC Radio 4: More or Less (available as a podcast, too).
Read about why some ideas survive and others die in Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
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