In researching Robin Baker’s book Sperm Wars, I found a number of fascinating stories concerning the man himself, which I’ve collected together here.

It all starts at Manchester University, in 1972, when Dr Baker starts experimenting with the idea that everybody has some sort of inbuilt magnetic compass which helps them navigate. To test this theory, people were transported blindfolded around Manchester, and after reaching a pre-determined point unknown to the subjects, they were asked to indicate the direction of ‘home’. According to Dr Baker, people were actually able to do this. However, other scientists working in navigation research were unconvinced, and many sceptics attempting to reproduce the results failed. Undeterred, Dr Baker re-analysed all the information from the other studies saying the experiments had worked, combined them, and claimed it as additional evidence for his theory.[1]

The media, who loves this type of story, quickly picked up on the idea of people having magnets in their heads, and granted Dr Baker a lot of press coverage. Then, shortly afterwards, Dr Baker turned to sex research, and human sperm competition.

Robin Baker, and his collaborator Mark Bellis, revealed in the early 1990′s that their nationwide survey had shown high levels of polyandry in the population, and that sperm from competing males battled to the death (killing each other inside the female reproductive tract) and that females controlled this conflict, using their orgasms to regulate the uptake of sperm, and ultimately the fatherhood of their children.[2]

At the same time, Dr Baker proposed that men with bigger testicles would be most successful in the race to fertilise most eggs, and that the testis size of individual men could predict their success in sperm competition. Remarkably, Dr Baker had managed to persuade 14 of his male colleagues to measure the size of their left testicle, using callipers. He then asked 20 female colleagues to look at the men, and rank them according to whom they would most like to have an adulterous relationship with. As he predicted, there was a correlation between the big-balled males and the apparent likelihood that the men would engage in extra-pair copulation, if given the opportunity.

Dr Baker’s methodology was however flawed: When reporting testis size, he hadn’t expressed testis size in relation to the height of the male owner of the testicles. In the animal kingdom, it is obvious that larger animals have larger testes. Further, we don’t know the races of the men in Dr Baker’s sample. Racial differences can account for a large variation in testis size.[3] Also, a great many other variables could have caused this positive correlation, none of which were taken into account.

Then in 1994, the media took further interest in the work of Baker and Bellis, as Desmond Morris (of Naked Ape fame) based a portion of his TV series ‘The Human Animal‘ on Baker and Bellis’s theories. Telling viewers that men who suspected their sexual partner had been unfaithful could unconsciously release specialised ‘killer sperm’ in their ejaculate, which then went about destroying the rival male’s sperm, whilst their regular sperm concentrated on penetrating the egg. The programme even showed footage of what looked like one sperm battering another sperm to death. However, according to several Andrologists, this sperm looked like it was already dead. And, even if this really was one sperm killing another, because none of the sperm were labelled in any way, how could anybody know whether these were sperm from different males, or the same male?

The theory that different types of sperm within a human ejaculate each had a specific role in sperm competition formed the basis of what Baker and Bellis termed the ‘Kamikaze sperm hypothesis’. And at the time, the claims made were earth-shattering! Sperm warfare going on inside female bodies was given some initial credibility because of theories about sperm competition and sperm choice provided by other biologists, from studies in the animal kingdom. However, it’s very dangerous to anthropomorphize; and the Kamikaze sperm hypothesis has been disproved several times since then.

1. Baker, R. R., The Evolutionary Ecology of Animal Migration (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978); Baker, R. R., ‘Human navigation and magnetoreception: the Manchester experiments do replicate‘, Animal Behaviour (1987), 35, 691-704
2. Baker, R. R., and M. A. Bellis, Human Sperm competition (London: Chapman & Hall, 1995)
3. Diamond, J. M, ‘Variation in human testis size‘, Nature (1986), 320, 488-9

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, History, Sociobiology at 10:13 PM BST

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I’m always surprised at how little the people interested in having as much sex as possible actually know about reproduction and procreation. Much of the history is fascinating stuff, filled with interesting characters who had amazing ideas.

Things that we take for granted today weren’t always so, and by way of a quick primer, I should like to offer this extract from the work of Tim Birkhead (Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Sheffield) who explains this subject far better than I could, and really brings the history to life.

In his book Ornithologia, published in 1599, the Italian scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi commented on the great lustfulness of the rooster.² In contrast to other birds like the eagle and sparrow, who ‘copulate less frequently and are content with a single partner, the rooster treads his numerous wives fifty times a day.’ Aldrovandi also noted that aggression among cockerels was not associated with the acquisition of food or protection of their offspring, but was motivated entirely by the desire to maintain sole control over their females: ‘The rooster fights because he does not wish any of his hens to be touched by anyone and he thus performs the functions of a wise father protecting his honour.’ The cause of the cockerels’ salacity, Aldrovandi suggested, was their ‘especially abundant genital semen: since they cannot endure the irritation it produces they hurry towards sexual satisfaction.’ The Italian anatomist Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1537-1619) was the first to identify the ovary of the hen as the source of ova, but was unable to transpose the concept to humans because the ovaries of birds and women are so different in appearance. Fabricius taught and greatly influenced William Harvey (1578-1657), whose main claim to fame was discovering the circulation of the blood. The two men differed on a number of points relating to reproduction. Fabricius thought that hens could store viable sperm for an entire breeding season (several months) following a single insemination, but Harvey accurately showed that thirty days was the maximum duration.³ Fabricius thought that semen stimulated the generative process without entering the egg; Harvey was convinced that embryonic development was initiated by semen penetrating the egg, but without a microscope he was unable to demonstrate this.

The story of the discovery of spermatozoa – literally ‘sperm animals’ – by Anton Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), or more likely by his student Johan Ham, is well known.^4,3 Leeuwenhoek reported to the Royal Society how, by means of his home-made microscope – comprising a single exquisitely ground lens, which magnified 300 times – he had observed in his own semen millions of vigorously swimming spermatozoa. His letter to the Royal Society is somewhat coy: ‘What I investigate is only what, without sinfully defiling myself, remains as a residue after conjugal coitus. And if your Lordship should consider that these observations may disgust or scandalise the learned, I earnestly beg your Lordship to regard them as private and to publish or destroy them as your Lordship thinks fit.’ Luckily, the Royal Society thought it appropriate to publish Leeuwenhoek’s findings, in which he suggested that is was the minute microscopic creatures swimming in the semen that entered the egg and resulted in fertilization. This was controversial stuff, and some of his colleagues at the Royal Society thought that all that Leeuwenhoek had seen were parasites. After all, Leeuwenhoek had shown the existence of numerous microscopic animals when he examined the scrapings from his teeth!

It wasn’t until a further century had passed that another Italian, Lazzaro Spallanzani, a priest cum scientist, provided unequivocal evidence for Leeuwenhoek’s spermatozoa hypothesis for fertility. Given its current unease with matters sexual, it seems rather surprising that the Church should have provided Spallanzani with both moral protection and financial assistance in his efforts to establish the role of semen in reproduction. Spallanzani worked mainly with frogs, whose reproductive behaviour had been lovingly described by the Dutch biologist Jan Swammerdam (1367-80) in his Book of Nature.³ During the breeding frogs:

“become so eagerly intent on the business of propagation, that they take no care in a manner of their own safety … The male frog leaps upon the female, and when seated on her back, he fastens himself to her … and throws his forelegs round her breast … He most beautifully joins his toes between one another, in the same manner as people do their fingers at prayer … and closes them so firmly that I found it impossible to loosen them with my naked hands … At last the eggs are discharged in the female’s fundament in a long stream, and the male … immediately fecundifies, fertilizes or impregnates them by an effusion of his semen. As soon as these eggs have escaped from the female body, between hers and the male’s hinder legs, and have been impregnated by the male’s semen, the two frogs abandon each other.”

Inspired by some novel but unsuccessful experiments of two colleagues, Spallanzani made pairs of prophylactic oilskin trousers for male frogs to prevent their semen from reaching the females eggs.³ The experiment worked: despite the encumbrance of the trousers the males grasped the females, whose eggs were not fertilized, ‘for want of being bewedded with semen’. Spallanzani then conducted the other essential part of the experiment. Recovering the drops of semen from inside the trousers, he applied these to a female’s eggs which subsequently developed. Moving swiftly from external to internal fertilization and from frogs to dogs, Spallanzani performed the ultimate experiment. He took a female spaniel and before she came on to heat placed her under lock and key inside his apartment, away from male dogs. When she was obviously in oestrus Spallanzani found a male spaniel ‘which furnished me, by spontaneous emission, with nineteen grains of seed, which were immediately inseminated’ into the female. Sixty-two days later ‘the bitch brought forth three very lively puppies’ which resembled both the male and the female. This was the first ever successful artificial insemination involving internal fertilization. With some justification Spallanzani was delighted with his efforts: ‘the success of this experiment gave me a pleasure which I have never experienced in any of my philosophical researches.’

Spallanzani’s studies demonstrated unequivocally for the first time that semen was essential for fertilization, and in doing so dispelled the centuries-old concept of spontaneous generation. Notwithstanding these clever experiments Spallanzani still thought that ‘spermatic worms’ played no role in fertilization. The reason for this was the outcome of another ingenious investigation in which he filtered semen in order to establish which component of semen – sperm or seminal fluid – was responsible for fertilization. A mixture of filtered semen and eggs generated fertile eggs and Spallanzani deduced, entirely logically, that it was the seminal fluid rather than the spermatozoa that triggered development. What he had not realized was quite how difficult it was successfully to separate sperm from seminal fluid and it is now obvious to us that some sperm must have remained. On the basis of these experiments Spallanzani believed that the seminal fluid stimulated the foetal heart, which lay pre-formed inside the egg, and triggered development.⁵ It was nearly another century before George Newport in 1853 showed, again using frogs, that sperm actually penetrated the egg and were essential if fertilization was to occur.⁴

Spallanzani was an ‘ovist’, believing each egg to contain a pre-formed embryo. In rather vigorous contrast, the ‘spermists’ thought that the sperm contained the entire embryo and that copulation and insemination were little more than embryo transfer. In the spermist’s scheme the female was regarded merely as a recipient vessel to provide the optimum environment for the embryo’s growth. Nicholas Hartsoeker (1665-1725) encapsulated the spermists view of the male’s central role in reproduction in his drawing of a sperm containing an extremely cramped homunculus with a gigantic head, In fact, Hartsoeker never claimed to have seen the little man inside a sperm, merely that if he could this is what it would look like. Nevertheless, the idea of a pre-formed body inside each sperm was an appealing, and not unreasonable, one during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It did, however, worry James Cooke, an English doctor, who wondered in 1762 what happened to all the sperm that did not give rise to a new person.⁴ He thought they might not die, but ‘live a latent life, in an insensible or dormant state, like Swallows in Winter, lying quite still like a stopped watch when let down, till [they] are received afresh into some other male Body of the proper kind’.

But it was these wasted sperm, together with their minute size, that finally brought the demise of the spermist viewpoint. The French physician Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertius summed up the spermist’s problem in 1744: ‘This little worm, swimming in the seminal fluid, contains an infinity of generations, from father to father. And each [pre-formed creature inside the sperm] has his seminal fluid, full of swimming animals so much smaller than himself.’ Sperm within sperm within sperm … on and on into infinity. Hartsoeker tried to calculate how small the sperm in the original rabbit would have to have been to account for all the rabbits that had ever lived. But it didn’t add up. Or, rather, it did, but the answer was so incredible, a figure involving 100,000 zeros, that it seemed ludicrous.

Exactly the same problem faced the Ovists.³ The mother of us all was Eve and her ovaries must, like a Russian doll, have contained an endless series of smaller and smaller homunculi to sustain the human race. Hardly a likely scenario. There were other objections: the ovist view could not, for example, account for the occurrence of hybrids: if the ovum of a horse contained a pre-formed horse, where do mules come from?

The alternative to the pre-formationist view of both the spermists and the ovists was epigenesis – the idea that embryos resulted from the fusion of male and female sex cells, an idea favoured by William Harvey, among others. But even this had its problems. While the observations of early embryologists were consistent with the generation of new structures arising during development, there had to be some sort of pre-formation to account for the resemblance between offspring and their parents. The transfer of this information, it was deduced, must occur at conception.⁴ The turning point came in 1875 when Oscar Hertwig showed, using sea urchins, that the sperm head fused with the female genetic material inside the egg to form the nucleus of a new being.

References:

1. Jöchle, W., ‘Biology and pathology of reproduction in Greek mythology’, Conception (1971), 4, 1-13
2. Lind, L. R., Aldrovandi on Chickens (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963)
3. Pinto-Correia, C., The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm Preformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
4. Moore, J. A., Science as a way of Knowing (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993)
5. Laurila, A., and P. Seppa, ‘Multiple paternity in the common frog (Rana temporaria): genetic evidence from tadpole kin groups’, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (1998), 63, 221-32

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, History at 6:00 PM BST

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Sometimes I meet guys, and they’re a bit shy around women… Anyway, I’ve now been told the craziest bit of evolutionary nonsense since somebody recommended I read Sperm Wars.

He says, and I quote:

“About 50,000 years ago, humans used to live in small tribes of around 50 people, so everyone knew everybody else. It would be very unlikely that you would encounter another group, because the nearest one would be several weeks travel away.

Therefore, there would be about 25 females that you could mate with, all of whom knew each other. But, some would be too sick / old / young / etc. to be able to reproduce, and that would leave about five possible female mates.

If you were to approach one of them and she rejected you, everybody would know about it. And the tribal leader would get the other 23 guys to take you into the woods and kill you, to prevent any further attempts by you to weaken the gene-pool, with your weak genes.

Or if he didn’t do that, every female would now know you are undesirable, so they would not mate with you. The nearest tribe would be several weeks travel away. You would now effectively be sterile, and you would not be able to pass on your genes.”

He believes that because of this fear, some sort of genetic memory has perpetuated through the Human race and that’s why he feels nervous meeting women.

Now, I understand that people can convince themselves of some pretty crazy stories; maybe that a rabbits foot or a four leaf clover will help them become more fortunate etc. And I’ve known people attribute all kinds of miraculous things to the power of positive thinking. But this is plain wacky! It doesn’t help him in a Personal Development sense, and it seems more like an excuse that will only encourage him to stay shy around women (and probably guys too).

Aside from the highly doubtful question as to whether genetic memory exists or not, firstly, my friend seems to be judging ancient events using a modern perspective, which is always a very dangerous thing to do, since people then would have had vastly different views from modern times. This is even the case if one looks back at society only a hundred years ago.

He seems awfully knowledgeable about the living conditions of primitive man, even though I haven’t seen research as certain, in academic literature.

And furthermore, he assumes that females are always monogamous, when in fact the time difference between the sex act, the girl showing pregnant, and the birth of the baby would certainly not have given any clues to a primitive man as to who had caused, or even why this event even had happened.

Also, modern genetics was only discovered relatively recently by Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), so that rules out any possibility of these tribesmen even contemplating a gene-pool.

Next, this leaves a number of BIG questions unanswered:

• Do we really know what people thought 50,000 years ago?
• Do all women really have the same taste in men?
• Were ancient tribes obsessed with social climbing? Research into primitive cultures usually suggests that it’s often a group of tribal elders who would have controlled the actions of the group, not one man.
• In many very poor societies, marrying off a daughter would be a good thing; the family would have one less mouth to feed, and the remaining males may be seen as more useful to support the parents in old age. Certainly, marriages have been used in more recent history to forge allegiances between families.
• If these other 23 guys aren’t going to get laid, what’s their incentive to take you out and give you the Flintstone equivalent of a concrete overcoat? Should a leader be as tyrannical as described, the answer would surely be for the 23 guys to remove him from power, and enact some other form of government.
• Why should they kill someone and thus reduce the population by 2%; therefore losing an extra pair of hands for growing crops, hunting animals, defending the tribe or worshiping the gods etc.?
• If you were killed, then surely any Genetic memory (assuming it even exists) would end with you, and therefore not be perpetuated through to modern times.
• In the unlikely event that he were to be correct, and somehow only one man had access to impregnate all the females; modern genetics tells us that inbreeding depression would result, and the tribe would suffer:
  • Elevated incidences of recessive genetic diseases
  • Reduced fertility and sperm viability
  • Increased congenital defects (Cryptorchidism, Heart defects, Cleft palates)
  • Fluctuating asymmetry (crooked faces, uneven eye placement and size etc)
  • Lower birth weight offspring
  • Higher neonatal mortality
  • Loss of immune system function

Further, if the tribal women were in control, and somehow could detect a male’s ‘superior’ genetics, and thus refuse to breed with the ‘inferior’ males, as in some type of primitive controlled breeding program. Then the genetic directional selection would highly favour those males deemed to be more attractive, with the resulting problem that very soon all the genetic variation for these traits would be used up, and all the individuals would become extremely similar. History tells us that this has never been the case.

Breeders of domestic animals found this out when they put their breeding programmes into practice – They imposed strong artificial directional selection on cattle to improve milk yield, or on chickens to improve egg production. But within a few generations all individuals were much the same and no further improvements could be made. If this were true of sexual selection among human females, then there would be no point in the females exerting any choice at all.

I think a much more likely, and much simpler suggestion would be that when he was little, his parents would tell him things such as “Don’t talk to strangers!“, “People you don’t know might do bad things to you!”. All of which is sound advice for a small child, and will certainly keep that child safe; but now that he’s grown up, it’s not as much use, and in fact has become a limiting belief that he just needs to unlearn.

Posted by Jonathan as History, Sociobiology at 11:58 PM BST

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Every time I hear some “Expert” waffle on about how only 7% of communication is verbal, I have to bite my tongue to stop laughing at such a ridiculous claim.

I saved this article a couple of years back, and the original seems to have disappeared since. Therefore, I’ll repost it here, and it can go to show that dramatic sounding information doesn’t become true just because it’s repeated quite often, by people who aren’t even bothered enough to check their facts.

Blasting Away an Old NLP Myth

(www.neurosemantics.com)

Meta-States in NLP Patterns Series
What carries the Most Impact in Communication?
Verbal or Non-Verbal Channels?

I first read the following article by “Buzz” Johnson in 1994 when it was published in Anchor Point. Having worked in communications as a trainer and therapist I knew that the old statement that 93% of communication is non-verbal was wrong. I would have known that from having tried to watch and understand movies on planes when I didn’t buy the headphones. Watching their faces wasn’t enough. When the movie was in a foreign language, I’d get more of a sense of when the actors were angry, upset, in love, etc. But that was about it.

This article confirms the fact that most information which we receive from each other in our communications is not non-verbal information and not conveyed by the non-verbal channels of tone, facial expressions, or body “language.” No. It is rather our meta-representational system of language that allows us to convey most of the information in our lives. Try to “say” (send the informational content) that “Supper will be ready at 5:45 p.m.” with just some tones and facial expressions! This highlights the crucial role that the higher linguistic systems play in our lives. We need words to convey higher level as beliefs, concepts, understandings, ideas, plans, meanings, etc. So while primary states are valuable and important, meta-states are much more so. They truly govern our experiences inasmuch as they set the conceptual and semantic frames that we live in. Enjoy.

L. Michael Hall

THE 7%, 38%, 55% MYTH

Dr. C. E. “Buzz” Johnson

In the remote sense that anyone in the NLP field needs their memories refreshed concerning the numbers in the above title, let me briefly give my recollection from numerous sessions. The total message one receives in any face to face communication is divided into three components. The words themselves, the tonality used in delivering those words, and the body language accompanying the other two.

The numbers indicate the relative weight or importance assigned to each of these three areas with body language receiving the 55% figure, tonality the 38%, and the actual words themselves being tagged with a paltry 7%. This strangely skewed distribution has bothered me ever since my introduction into this marvellous arena called NLP.

Out of the Mist

The first reason for my puzzlement was that none of my NLP instructors could tell me where those figures came from. Please do not interpret this to mean that I had been cursed with unknown and unknowing fly-by-night mentors. They are all very well known and active in the NLP community. They are also, in my opinion, excellent teachers. However, when asked where I might find further information about the research that produced those numbers, I was vaguely referred to a variety of well known universities. I later drew a blank at each of these institutions.

Secondly, if these percentages are really valid it would mean that the learning of foreign languages could be greatly abbreviated. After all, if the words only account for 7% of the meaning of communication, we should all be able to go to any country in the world, and simply by listening to the tone and carefully observing the body language, be able to accurately interpret 93% of their communications! And I’ll bet you always thought that learning Chinese or Russian would be a real stretch. In fact, from these percentages, it appears that you needn’t even bother. You may be better off without being encumbered by all the intricacies of any language. People like Leo Buscaglia are looking forward to the time when words will no longer be necessary as he states in his book Living, Loving & Learning. Since a word such as “love” has as many definitions as it has definers, he feels it will be a happy day when the world of word hang-ups is replaced by “vibrations.”

Counting on What?

I wonder how many of you have a 93% rate of accuracy when it comes to interpreting and understanding even your most intimate friends and family members? And that’s with people speaking the same official language with its 7% impact!

It is not only the NLP community that is espousing and apparently believing the 7_38_55 myth. I’ve heard therapists and counsellors who were unfamiliar with NLP allude to those same numbers. There also seems to be a widespread belief among the general population that words are relatively unimportant. I’m sure most of us have heard people mid-read with statements such as, “She didn’t really mean what she said; she probably meant XXX instead.” Or, “He may have said that but he didn’t really mean it.” Or, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

In NLP change work, note how carefully we re-word statements in order to reframe a client’s personal perceptions. And by very skilfully using just the right hypnotic language patterns, we are able to rapidly enhance desired shifts in our clients’ understandings and attitudes and beliefs. Would we need to be this meticulous and conscientious if we were really dealing with only 7% of a person’s awareness and comprehension?

I was finally able to track down the source of this myth thanks to a professional speaker who makes his living giving sales seminars and workshops. And yes, the 7-38-55 was an important part of his presentations. He didn’t know how to spell the name of the individual responsible for the research that originated those numbers or which university was involved, but he gave me a valuable starting point by offering me a couple of different possible pronunciations. I think you’ll be interested in what I found.

The Study

Albert Mehrabrian, Ph.. Of UCLA was the originator of the 7-38-55 theory. He speaks of it in two books, Silent Messages published in 1971, and Nonverbal Communications published in 1972. In these two books, he refers to research projects which were published in various professional journals. I will get to the journals in more detail later, but first let’s look at some of his statements from one of the books.

From Chapter 3 of Silent Messages we find that the numbers 7-38-55 expressed as percentages have to do only with what he calls the resolution of inconsistent messages, or to put it in NLP terms, incongruencies. He also states that there are very few things that can be communicated non-verbally. He initially was investigating liking/ disliking which he later generalized into feelings. In speaking with him by phone in March, 1994, he stated that his findings and inferences were not meant to be applied to normal communications. They were of very limited application.

Let me paraphrase some of his thoughts from page 134 toward the end of that book. Clearly, it is not always possible to substitute actions for words and therefore, what are the limitations of actions as instruments of communication? If you’ve ever played charades, you know that words and language are by far the most effective way of expressing complex and abstract ideas. The ideas contained in Silent Messages, and most other books for that matter, couldn’t be done with actions. A very important thing to remember about the differences between words and actions is that actions only permit the expression of a limited set of things; namely, primary feelings and attitudes.

The Details

Now let’s examine in more detail the specifics of a couple of his experiments from which some people have made some rather sweeping and inaccurate generalizations. From the Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1967, Vol. 31. No. 3, pg. 248-252 is a report entitled Inference Of Attitudes From Nonverbal Communication In Two Channels. This study was designed to investigate the decoding of inconsistent and consistent communications of attitude in facial and vocal channels. The experimental team found that the facial component received approximately 3/2 the weight received by the vocal component. You can readily see that this roughly corresponds to the 38% and 55% figures mentioned earlier.

You may be wondering how this study was conducted. There was only one word used. That word was “maybe,” selected for its apparent neutrality. Three female speakers were tape recorded saying that word wile varying their tone of voice so as to communicate three different attitudes (i.e., like, neutral, and dislike) towards an imagined addressee. Then the tapes were listened to by 17 female subjects with instructions to imagine that the speaker is saying this word to another person and judged by the tones what the speaker’s attitude is towards that imaginary addressee. So there was no direct feedback by anyone who was being addressed. It was a number of third-party listeners who were asked to mind-read, guess, interpret, imagine, etc., how the speaker felt towards someone who wasn’t even there and, in fact, didn’t even exist. There was no way to see or hear the reactions of this phantom individual, about whom someone was going to make several long-lasting and powerful speculations.

Next, black and white photographs were taken of three female models as they attempted to use facial expressions to communicate like, neutrality, and dislike towards another person. Then photos were shown to the same 17 subjects with the instructions that they would be shown the pictures and at the same time hear a recording of the word “maybe” spoken in different tones of voice. “You are to imagine that the person you see and hear (A) is looking at and talking to another person (B).” For each presentation they were to indicate on a rating scale what they thought A’s attitude was toward B. Again, third-party mind-reading with no direct contact with the person addressed, B, because that person was non-existent. The conclusions from this experiment were that the facial components were stronger than the vocal by the ratio of 3/2 as referred to earlier.

An interesting comment that came out of the discussion section indicated that the effect of redundancy (i.e., consistent attitude communication in two or more channels) is to intensify the attitude communicated in any one of the component channels. Perhaps this is something that could be more profitably pursued instead of the denigration of words. Or as you can see from this particular study, word, not words. And that word was “maybe.” It seems to play words under quite a handicap not much different from playing charades.

Two Studies Combined

They integrated this study with another one to come up with the .07, .38, and .55 coefficients. This second study was reported in the Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 1967, Vol. 6, No. 1, pg. 109-114 entitled, Decoding of Inconsistent Communications. Here they dealt with inconsistent communication of attitude in two components; tone of voice and nine different words. Three words were selected that seemed to indicate a positive attitude, “honey,” “thanks,” and “dear.” Three were neutral, “maybe,” “really,” and “oh,” and three were negative, “don’t,” “brute,” and “terrible.”

Two female speakers were employed to read each of the nine words with each of the three tones, positive, neutral, or disliking of an imaginary addressee. These were recorded on tape which was then listened to by 30 University of California undergraduates.

They were instructed to imagine that each word was being said by one person to another and to judge what the speaker’s attitude was towards the imaginary recipient. One-third were told to ignore the information conveyed by the meaning of the words and to pay attention only to the tone. Another third were told to ignore the tone and pay attitude only to the meaning of the words. The last third were told to utilize both the tone and the content.

The findings were that the independent effects of tone, overall, were stronger than the independent effects of content. I should think so! After all, the words allowed were very limited while the tones allowed were unlimited as long as certain feelings were being demonstrated. But, after all, Mehrabian’s main interest is in non-verbal types of communication. However, in fairness, it was mentioned in the discussion that the methodology used failed to solve the problem for which it was intended. An alternative methodology could have employed written communication for assessing the independent effects of content and electronically filtered speech (with the content rendered incomprehensible) for assessing the independent effects of tone. I don’t know if an alternative experiment like that was ever carried out.

After commenting on some of the methodological problems, they do go on to say that the results indicate that judgments of attitude from inconsistent messages involving single words spoken with intonation are primarily based on the attitude carried in the tonal component. The use of single words is a long way away from normal communications, don’t you think? In fact, they admit that their findings can only be safely extended to situations in which no additional information about the communicator-addressee relationship is available. This seems to relegate it to the realm of tightly controlled laboratory-pure experimentation only.

I would invite all of you readers to examine not only Mehrabian’s books, but also his articles in the professional journals which go into more detail concerning his experiments. If enough of us carefully analyze the available data, perhaps we can reinterpret the results in a more useful, meaningful, and workable way than we have in the past.

Time for Accuracy

If we continue to disseminate erroneous information such as the 7-38-55 myth, I feel we are doing a grave disservice not only to the NLP community, but to the public in general. We could do a great service by helping the public realize that the words they use on themselves as well a on others are extremely important in determining the effectiveness and longevity of relationships, the strength of personal self-esteem, and a whole host of other psychological physiological phenomena.

Words and language are probably the primary motivation factors for human beings and they can be enhanced by proper congruent tonality and body language. They can also be somewhat diminished by incongruencies which then often show up as confusion and bewilderment in relationship situations. For example, think how often some battered women have desperately believed the words of their batterers despite overwhelming incongruent behaviour. “He said he was really going to change this time.”

Think of your own personal experiences in close relationships that have gone sour. Haven’t you also hoped and waited for change that would transform incongruent communication signals into congruent ones? Especially before NLP training? Haven’t most of us, at some time, hopelessly clung to our own inaccurate interpretation of another’s actions hoping for a miracle that would once again make everything whole and comfortable just like we thought it used to be? And what was the total affect of the spoken word at those times? Did the words really have only a 7% influence on our hopes and desires? Not likely. Given the emotional impact of prior experience and beliefs, our memories are not about to logically reduce the words of a loved one, or former loved one, to such an insignificant role instantaneously.

Such impersonal and coldly analytical reactions are probably destined to remain in the safety aloof confines of the experimental laboratory with its pretend situations and imaginary interactions. Perhaps we could benefit from a re-assessment of old acquired beliefs in the glaring light of real life relationship reactions and perceptions.

References:

• Buscaqlia, Leo. (1982). Living, loving, & learning. Charles B. Slack, Inc.
• Mehrabian, Albert. (1972). Nonverbal communication. Aldime Atherton, Inc.
• Mehrabian, Albert. (1971). Silent Messages. Wadsworth Publishing Co.
• Mehrabian, Albert; Ferris, Susan. (1967). Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vol. 31. No. 3. Pg. 248_252.
• Mehrabian, Albert; Wiener, Morton. (1967). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 1. Pg. 109_114.

Author:

Dr. C. E. “Buzz” Johnson, retired Optometrist, has been through Master Practitioner and Trainer’s Training. He has been researching the power of words in a variety of different disciplines, medicine, education, addictions, relationships, psycho-neuro-immunology, hypnosis, psychotherapy, etc.

Quoted by Permission from Dr. Johnson, Published originally in Anchor Point, July 1994.

Posted by Jonathan as History, Psychology at 11:00 AM BST

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