Body language

People always go on about the importance of body language over what is heard in communication.

“you know, the 7% rule proved that it’s mainly body language, what you say doesn’t matter” isn’t an unusual thing to hear in lay conversations.

 

Albert Mehrabian published his book ‘Silent Messages’ in 1971 where he described what has become known as ‘the 7% rule’. This was his finding that the actual words spoken only account for 7% of the ‘credibility of communication’, and that 55% of the weight of credibility is given to a speaker’s body language and the further 38% to the tone and music of their voice.

 

This limited research attracted strong criticism and challenge and is now thought to be nonsense. Indeed,  Mehrabian  himself has published on its inadequacy. However, google searches still show that the original publication with the attractive nomenclature of the ‘7% rule’  gained such a traction that it is still hard to persuade people that it doesn’t convey an accurate understanding of how communication works.

 

when looking up the details for this blog post, I was pleased to be reminded that even Mehrabian’s study showed the words and the tone of voice used to convey them, together  accounted for 45% of the ‘credibility of conversation’. If pushed though, I would guess that most people who quote the ‘7% rule’ probably mistakenly think that the 7% refers to both the content and tone (and the remaining 93% is entirely visual).

 

So, you’re probably   thinking, what am I doing dredging up this out of date and long-disregarded research. Well, because I think that it still has a currency.

 

I was going to say that popular psychology is popular, then stopped myself, but it is certainly true that ‘pop psychology’ offers the interested public a lot of easy ‘facts’ that, while purporting to help explain the world, and offer insight into some of its complexities, tends to provide us with fairly fixed positions that  are quickly latched  onto and that become embedded in the popular psyche as ‘facts’. Consequently, this means that many people have the belief that it doesn’t particularly matter what you say or how you say it, it is what your body is doing while you’re saying it that is the important give-away. It isn’t a great leap then to see how, when blind people’s means of communication is  put up against such beliefs, our lack of ability to ‘see’ body language leaves us wanting, and therefore diminished in the perception of our communication- unless of course we have that ‘sixth sense’ to bridge the gap.

 

Much of what I have discussed in this blog over the months is about the less talked about and perhaps more subtle ways that blind people and disabled people more generally are variously looked down upon, disregarded, disingenuously over-affirmed and treated with contempt. Blind people’s lack of sight is frequently extrapolated to deficits in other aspects of their perception. Even the word ‘blind’ is commonly used as a pejorative metaphor for lack of awareness, lack of insight and naivety.

 

Coming back to the so called ‘7% rule’ and the associations that have become attached to the concept, I think that a consequence is to further the polarisation of the importance of sight over hearing. While I don’t question the obvious advantages of eyesight, I do question the absolute need for sight in communication, especially by people who have spent their lives honing their skills without it.