Mehrabian's finding: when tone and facial expression contradicted the word, listeners weighted tone and face over the word — in that narrow setting. He has spent decades publicly correcting the generalisation. The honest takeaway survives intact: when channels conflict, nonverbal channels dominate the emotional read. NLP pages citing "93%" are marking themselves as unscholarly; this one does not.
The Mehrabian Myth (7-38-55)
The claim — 93% of communication is nonverbal — is a misreading of Albert Mehrabian's 1967 studies, which tested only incongruent single-word emotional utterances under lab conditions.
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ShriViral Manek, Institute of NLP India · reviewed 30 Sept 2026