His body language pulls us deeper into the narrative–when he frowns, we frown. See how his eyebrows move, and how his arms flail during particularly tense moments? Try watching one of Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies. We express and interpret these bodily signs without even thinking. The expression you make when delivering bad news, the posture you take while leading a meeting–these are all manifestations of body language.

Exposed palms show nothing is concealed in the hands, hunched shoulders protect the throat from attack, and raised brows serve as a universal, submissive greeting.” Many nonverbal gestures are made up of different parts.Īccording to Barbara and Allan Pease, authors of The Definitive Book of Body Language, “The shoulder shrug is a universal gesture that expresses confusion. It’s important to practice awareness of how your local culture interprets nonverbal cues so that you can prevent miscommunications from occurring. Interpretations of body language vary from country to country, and from culture to culture. So what is body language?īody language is an aspect of nonverbal communication where physical behavior is used (as opposed to or in addition to words) to convey information. The fact that the Mehrabian equation is not universally applicable doesn’t mean that body language isn’t important– studies have shown that body language awareness is crucial for delivering a message–we just don’t have a number for how important it is (yet). Let’s forget about the 55-38-7 rule and go back to the drawing board. On top of that, no studies have actually been done to properly calculate how much of communication is based on body language.

In other words, he did come up with that equation, but its application is limited. Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, applicable. This “rule” is based on a study that was done in the 1960s by Albert Mehrabian, an Armenian psychologist.īut Mehrabian himself includes this disclaimer on his website: “These equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like–dislike). The 55%-38%-7% rule, which states that only 7% of communication is verbal, has soaked into marketing canon–but it’s not actually true. On lots of psychology sites and even in some books, you might have read that body language accounts for 55% of a communicated message. The way you say something is just as important as the words you use, so you need to be extra careful in making sure that confused body language doesn’t muddle your message.

Body language psychology