September 6, 2005
If Only You Could See and Hear Me...and I, You.
Here's a sobering study in this time of techno communications.
UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian found that 55% of meaning in an interaction comes from facial and body language and 38% comes from vocal inflection. Only 7% of an interaction's meaning is derived from the words themselves.
We intuit this already, but we hide behind the ease of the Internet and communicate all too often in an impersonal context. I remember reading a study that showed the amazing paucity of words spoken daily between husbands and wives. Could that number have been even further reduced by web communications?
Deborah Tannen must have a thing or three to say about that.
Nothing beats face-to-face communications. Nothing. All the other stuff is fine and expeditious and time saving and so wonderfully easy (and, to a great degree, safe).
But "safe" has no "soul."
posted by David Rawle @ 9:24 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I agree. There's a real difference in printing out emails to save,no matter how well written or meaningful they may be, as opposed to the bundles old hand-written notes and letters we hang onto. Because it's as if we can feel those hands touching us in the marks they've made, the way they've held the pen, the folds in the paper. It's all between the lines in a way it never is in email.
I remember what a major revelation this idea was to me. I was working with actors for the first time, with a script I had written, and all of the sudden I realized that the words on the page and the words coming out of their mouths were two different beasts entirely, and another process altogether was required, one in which meaning and intent was defined, sculpted and fine-tuned. (And also that my writing had a loooong way to go.)
I think it's easy to mistake someone's persona -- be it on the page, on the TV screen, or on someone's blog or email -- as a complete representation of who they are. The Internet allows you do exchange facts and ideas and opinions, but it doesn't give you the chance to look into someone's eyes and sense how they're feeling and what they might be thinking; cyberspace is an intellect's dream but an empath's nightmare. Smiley-face emoticons don't convey the breadth of personality and feeling; if anything, they flatten and cheapen it.
The aptitude for unconscious, nonverbal communication is a gift we all share, and I think that the rise of impersonal forms of communication shows how we're taking it for granted. But I doubt very seriously that it's the beginning of the end, or something like that. I think people have an innate need for contact with one another, some more so than others, some less. We're all stuck on this rock together, so we may as well have a go at it and do our best.
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