Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: communication

[Ruddick, T.R. (RUDDICK]

Michael D. cited:

>Communication research tells us that, on the average, 7% of the message is
>carried by the words themselves.  38% is carried by tone of voice,
>inflection, volume, and other verbal factors.  55% is carried by non-verbal
>factors (for example, body posture, gestures, facial expressions).
>
>In other words, the written message loses, on the average, 93% of the
>available information.

Michael, I have to dispel this bad myth.  No communication research has ever
drawn that conclusion.  What has happened is that the original statement,
made by Albert Mehrabian, that "the EMOTIONAL content of any message is 93%
nonverbal" has been inflated to cover all communication.

As Mehrabian himself explained, if I ask you to go to my office and get me
the staple-puller that's in the rear left-hand side of the upper drawer,
ZERO percent of the content would be nonberbal--there's no emotion in that
message, and golly gee how could you begin to express it in gesture, vocal
tone and facial expression?

As a professor of communication, I am in a constant war trying to disabuse
people of overinflated and oversimplified notions about communication--some
fomented intentionally by pop-paperback millionaires like Gray and Fast,
others by the oversimplification of valid research by the likes of Mehrabian
and Watzlawick.

We now return to regular cohousing topics, like nasty little moggies...
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