“In human communication, 93% of meaning is conveyed through nonverbal cues such as body language and tone of voice rather than through the words themselves.”

We found that, using nonverbal content alone, people are 75–90% as accurate as they are with full audio cues in identifying positive vs negative relationships, and 45–53% as accurate in identifying eight different relationship types. The results broadly support Mehrabian’s claim that a significant amount of information about others’ social relationships is conveyed in the nonverbal component of speech. Early claims were made for the pre-eminence of nonverbal cues (the Mehrabian Conjecture), at least with respect to the communication of affect, with more than 90% of the information in conversation-based exchanges conveyed by nonverbal cues like intonation, phrasing, and facial expressions (Mehrabian, 1972).

Usually, the metacommunication is considered the nonverbal signals that accompany the verbal content and serves to clarify, amplify or even contradict the verbal content. Results indicate that perceptions of dominance are associated with a louder voice, more expressive facial behavior, more head movement, and more and longer turns-at-talk.

This qualitative study involved interviews with cancer care providers to develop a grounded theory model of communication that incorporates nonverbal and verbal aspects.

A much-repeated estimate in the popular literature is that 93 percent of the meaning in an exchange comes from nonverbal cues, leaving only 7 percent to be carried by the verbal utterance. Unfortunately, this estimate is based on faulty analysis. As Burgoon (1985) contends, the subjects in the main study by Mehrabian were communicating feelings and attitudes, and the statistic applies only to those limited circumstances.

The present study finds significant effects of the type of meaning conveyed, the age of the receiver, and the stimuli type used as an independent variable in the primary study. It seems clear that meaning is the product of both verbal and nonverbal information, apparently with little interaction between these channels.

The claim comes from early 1970s research by psychologist Albert Mehrabian. Mehrabian was testing 'the liking of one person to another.' Extrapolating findings in this one context (and, of course, without repeated studies validating this assessment) has no foundation. The experiment used photographs, frozen images of facial expression. Scholarship has also acknowledged the limits of Mehrabian’s findings.

Albert Mehrabian completed research in 1967 showing the significance of non-verbal cues under very specific conditions: Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking. These equations were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable, as Mehrabian himself stated.

An original meta-analysis demonstrates that, like verbal symbolic communication, nonverbal analogic (pantomimic) communication is related to left hemisphere cerebral processing. In contrast, spontaneous communication is related to the right hemisphere.

What’s become known as the 7%-38%-55% rule only applies to very specific communication circumstances. The application of the rule to communication in general is a misinterpretation of Albert Mehrabian’s research done in the 1960s that persists even with efforts on the part of Mehrabian and others to correct the misunderstanding. His initial research involved senders communicating a word for the receiver to interpret multiple times, with various levels of congruence between the word spoken and the accompanying tone and facial expression, specifically when communicating attitudes or feelings with inconsistent cues.

The ‘Mehrabian formula’ (7%/38%/55%) was established in situations where there was incongruence between words and expression. That is, where the words did not match the facial expression: specifically in Mehrabian’s research people tended to believe the expression they saw, not the words were spoken. Mehrabian did not intend the statistic to be used or applied freely to all communications and meaning.

Albert Mehrabian's 1967 studies, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined inconsistent communications where a single word conveyed liking or disliking, with tone and facial expressions varying. The 7-38-55 percentages apply only to such specific cases of feelings and attitudes with conflicting cues, not to general human communication. Mehrabian has repeatedly clarified on his website and in 'Silent Messages' (1971) that the rule does not apply broadly.

Ever heard that only 7% of our communication is verbal and 93% is nonverbal? This is one of the widely misused pieces of research, and biggest urban legends in communication, psychology, and human behavior. It's been quoted by thousands of so-called experts, but the formula does not explain how communication works in general.

93% of communication is not nonverbal and the 55% body language, 38% tone, and 7% vocal 'rule' is not at all true. The number was based on 2 studies by Dr. Albert Mehrabian on inconsistencies of messages involving feelings and attitudes, and he never said this was a general rule for all communication.

Nonverbal signals are often interpreted more quickly and can carry more weight than verbal communication. The effectiveness of nonverbal versus verbal cues varies depending on the context. When verbal and nonverbal cues are congruent, they reinforce each other, leading to greater perceived responsiveness.

The importance of nonverbal communication in sales has been widely acknowledged over the years. Although the external generalizability of these studies to sales settings might be questionable, it appears the overall consensus among authors in the social sciences is that nonverbal communication has more impact on message interpretation and influence than verbal communication.

Albert Mehrabian's 7-38-55 Communication model says 7% of communication is words, 38% through tone and voice and 55% through body language. Even Professor Mehrabian called out words of caution around the absolute accuracy of these percentages in his work. He noted that his research focused on the communication of emotions and feeling, and acknowledged that contributing factors will be quite different when different topics are being discussed.

Taken together with past research, the present findings suggest that nonverbal behavior may be relatively more important than verbal behavior. Perceivers with access to nonverbal, visual information were the most accurate perceivers of dyadic rapport. Adding verbal content to these channels showed no evidence of improving their judgment and may have even worsened it.

Albert Mehrabian found that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only. This is where the idea that the vast majority of communication is nonverbal originated, but does this really mean that less than 10% of information is conveyed in spoken words? The formula applies specifically to situations of emotional communication with conflicting verbal and nonverbal cues.

Nonverbal communication accounts for 93% of all communication—this claim is one of the most misleading statements repeated in books, articles, and trainings. It comes from Mehrabian's study on recognizing incongruencies between verbal and nonverbal cues in communicating attitudes, not general communication.