information on who mehrebian was and his studies

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Hi please can you help me I m trying to find out informtaion on mehrebian who he was and what his study of learning was about specificaly I am trying to get tye hbreakdwon of how he percieved people learnt in body language 70% Voice tone 23% and content 7% (is this right)

thanks

-- arabella underwood (aunderwood@cobragroup.com), March 10, 2005

Answers

I am only able to find a few websites that mention Mehrebian (which say 93% "body") and no references to him on PsycInfo or even on abebooks. I would be skeptical of this claim until you find an exact reference and have had a chance to analyze the procedure by which he came by this figure.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), March 10, 2005.

Hi Arabella, Mehrebian's breakdown of information sources from spoken communication into something like 7% from the meaning of words, 55% the way words are said, and 38% facial expressions (or other bodily expression), is useful in pointing out that there is more to communication than the words themselves. However, the numbers came from research limited to highly specific circumstances, and the percentages should not be applied freely to all types of spoken communication, much less communication in general. At best, you might use the percentage information as a very crude rule of thumb. In general percentages coming out of even good psychological research need to scrutinizied very carefully. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (prk@frontiernet.net), March 10, 2005.

I think you may mean Albert Mehrabian. There is a list of his publications at http://www.kaaj.com/psych/pub.html

And here is a biographical page: http://ericberne.com/people/albertmehrabian.htm

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), March 10, 2005.


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