You will be able to explain why the popular 7-38-55 claim misleads and what actually matters in delivery.
At a training session on presentation skills, the facilitator puts up a slide with three numbers: 7 percent words, 38 percent tone of voice, 55 percent body language. "So," she says, "what you say barely matters. It's all about how you say it." People nod and write it down. Some of them will repeat it at their own training sessions.
You have probably heard this claim, maybe more than once. It is one of the most quoted ideas in presentation advice, and in the form it is usually given, it is wrong. This reading explains where it comes from, what the research actually tested, and what it means for you.
The 7-38-55 figures trace back to work by Albert Mehrabian, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the late 1960s he and his colleagues ran a pair of small laboratory experiments about how people judge someone's feelings.
The experiments did not involve presentations, meetings or conversations. Participants heard single words, such as "dear" or "terrible", spoken in a tone that was positive, neutral or negative. In one study, recordings were paired with photographs of faces showing different expressions. The words, tone and expression were deliberately mismatched, so that a kind word might be said in a cold voice. Participants were asked to judge how the speaker felt.
When the signals conflicted, people relied more on tone and facial expression than on the single word. Combining the results of the two studies produced the 7-38-55 split.
Look at what was being tested. Participants heard one word at a time. They were judging feelings and attitudes, such as liking or dislike, and there was no information to pass on. The signals were mismatched on purpose, with tone and face contradicting the word, which is rare in ordinary speech. And the participants were small groups in a laboratory.
None of that resembles a talk at work, where you are explaining a proposal, an update or an idea, using thousands of words, with your tone and your face usually matching what you say. Applying the numbers to presentations stretches them far beyond what was studied. Mehrabian himself has said that his findings apply when people are communicating feelings and attitudes, and should not be stretched to communication in general.
There is also a simple test. If words carried only 7 percent of a message, you could follow most of a talk in a language you do not speak, just from tone and body language. You cannot. You might pick up that the speaker is enthusiastic or nervous, but not what they are proposing.
In a presentation, your words carry the content. The message, the structure, the evidence, the story and the ask all live in what you say. That is why modules 1 to 4 of this course spend so long on them.
Delivery does matter, but in a different way. Your voice, pace and body language affect whether people trust you, whether they can follow you, and whether they stay with you. A clear message delivered in a monotone, too fast, with no eye contact, will reach fewer people than the same message delivered well. Lesson 5.1, Pace, pauses and volume, and lesson 5.3, Eye contact, stance and gestures, cover that side.
There is one situation where the original research does say something useful. When your words and your delivery clash, people tend to believe the delivery. If you say "I'm confident this trial will work" while looking at the floor and speaking quietly, listeners may doubt the confidence. So delivery should match the message. That is a long way from saying words hardly matter.
The same thinking that spreads the 7-38-55 claim also spreads rules about individual gestures. "Never cross your arms, it looks defensive." "Touching your face means you are lying." "Hands in pockets look arrogant."
These rules treat one gesture as a reliable signal of one feeling. In practice, people cross their arms because the room is cold, because it is comfortable, or out of habit. Context, culture and the rest of a person's behaviour all change what a gesture means, as lesson 5.3 discussed. Treating any single gesture as a code is a good way to misread other people and to become self-conscious about your own body for no good reason.
Arjun had been told in a workshop never to put his hands behind his back. He spent his first presentation thinking about his hands instead of his message. A better guide is the one from lesson 5.3: watch yourself on video with the sound off and ask whether anything distracts. If nothing does, your hands are fine.
You will hear the 7-38-55 claim again, possibly from a manager or a trainer. It helps to have a short, polite way to explain why it does not mean what people think. The activity asks you to write two sentences you could say to a colleague.
Write two sentences you could say to a colleague explaining why the 7-38-55 claim does not mean words hardly matter.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).