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what's more important in communication
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what you say or how you say it
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generally the consensus tends to lean
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more towards how we say things our body
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language or our nonverbal behaviors as
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social scientists call it if you look
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online you will quickly find this to be
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true most of the attention historically
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and currently has been paid towards the
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importance of nonverbal behavior within
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communication because nonverbal supply a
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lot of information that isn't projected
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or supplied verbally in fact as I was
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looking up examples for this talk I even
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came across an article titled what TED
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Talks speakers teach us about presenting
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and one of the things that they focus on
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is the power of nonverbal it's not what
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you say it's how you say it or is it I
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want to challenge that perhaps what we
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say our verbal behaviors are much more
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important than we realize perhaps what
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we say has been so much more important
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now that ever has been before in history
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and perhaps we've been focusing on the
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wrong aspect of communication for a
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while but first I want to step back and
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talk a little bit more about
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communication in general one of the most
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important things about communication is
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having other people understand what
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you're saying establishing mutual
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understanding
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after all communicating can be quite
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difficult even though I can really
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understand each other right and so how
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do people actually even develop a mutual
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understanding for each other in the
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first place
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well previously researchers and writers
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have suggested that the development of
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common ground understanding is largely
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dependent on
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action partners coming to use the same
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words and essentially the same way
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however researchers have weren't able to
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test this empirically in order to
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determine if it's true or not because
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there hadn't been anything that could
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measure what they wanted to measure
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which was the extent to which
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interaction partners use the same words
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in essentially the same way fortunately
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though in recent decades a new measure
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called latent semantic similarity or LSS
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that they will be referring to it as was
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proposed to be such measure so what
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exactly is LSS so LSS is a measure that
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is assessed by using a program called
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Lane semantic analysis which is an
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automated statistical method that
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establishes the contextual meaning of
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any text by analyzing the relationship
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among the words that are used in other
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words the LSS measure determines how
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similar to blocks of text or to groups
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of words are to each other based on the
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words that are used and how those words
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are used in relation to other words so
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for example if I'm talking to where my
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friends about our weekend plans the LSS
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measure would first take all the words
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that I say compare it against all the
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words that my friend says and determine
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the amount of shared meaning that exists
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between us within our conversation and
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so as someone who studies Social
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Psychology and someone who is especially
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interested in how people come to
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understand each other especially the
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processes and the behaviors that
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underlie it my colleagues and I decided
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to test this measure in order to
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determine if it can actually be a
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legitimate measure of how much people
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understand each other and so in our very
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first study which has been published in
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the Journal of language and social
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psychology we analyzed a sample of
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videotaped recordings and in these
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recordings were the initial or a series
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of initial interactions between pairs of
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strangers who had just met for the very
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first time and so they had never met
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before and so they were having a
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conversation for the first time ever
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with each other so we analyzed this and
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we also analyzed and measured a wide
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variety of nonverbal and verbal
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behaviors that occurred within these
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interactions and we found that the LSS
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measure was indeed a legitimate measure
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of how much people understood each other
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so now we have something that can
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empirically measure this great so next
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we wanted to determine the behaviors
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that would significantly predict high
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levels of mutual understanding in other
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words what were the behaviors that were
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most important when you are
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communicating with someone and you want
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to establish common ground understanding
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and so in our second study we again
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analyzed a two completely separate
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samples of initial interactions that
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occurred between pairs of strangers
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again and then we also analyzed a wide
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variety of verbal and nonverbal
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behaviors and we found that the only
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behavior that consistently predicted how
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much people understood each other were
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their verbal behaviors how the amount of
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talking that they engaged in and how
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much how many questions they asked each
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other all the other behaviors like
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gestures or smiling laughing gazes
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nonverbal acknowledgments all of these
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nonverbal behaviors were not essential
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for the development of common ground
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understanding now that doesn't mean that
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nonverbal behaviors are not important in
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communication they are important when it
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comes to creating an emotionally
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Pleasant and involving interaction but
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they're not important when it comes to
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developing mutual understanding with
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each other and what is important
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is what we say the words that we use and
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so the the science behind this is only
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one reason why I argue that we should be
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really focusing more on what we say
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rather than how we say it
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the second reason and perhaps more
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important reason is the Internet the
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Internet has drastically changed how we
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communicate with each other on a daily
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basis and it has done so in a very very
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short amount of time as most of you will
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probably remember the internet became
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publicly available in the 1990s and up
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until then people primarily communicated
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either in person over the telephone or
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sent letters to name a few today how do
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we primarily communicate we send each
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other emails we send each other text
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messages we send each other instant
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messages we comment on each other's
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facebook statuses we tweet if you're on
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an online dating website which is
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becoming lis becoming increasingly
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popular and if you see someone that
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you're interested in what do you do you
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send up a message we engage in this form
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of communication so much every day and
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it has literally allowed us to
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communicate with anybody on the planet
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at the touch of our fingertips whether
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or not that person is halfway across the
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world or if that person is right next to
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us the Internet and the technological
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advances that have resulted from it have
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made communication so much easier and
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has change the face of communication
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just in general and the resulting
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different types of communication all
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have one thing in common they're all
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primarily text-based they consist solely
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upon the words that we use our verbal
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behaviors no one is going to know
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whether or not you had shifty eyes or
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that you were
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nervously twiddling your thumbs whenever
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you send a text message or an email or
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an instant message our body language our
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nonverbals don't really matter in this
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type of communication that dominates our
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everyday lives and yet we continue to
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focus on it and again I don't believe
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that nonverbal behaviors are not
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important they are but if we are to live
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in a society where we primarily engage
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in this type of communication where this
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type of communication is so largely
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intertwined with our sense of self our
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well-being and our livelihood we should
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adapt accordingly and we should begin to
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place more importance on the behavior
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that we engage in the most and that and
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that has the most influence the words
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that we use we should be focusing more
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on what we say rather than how we say
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thank you very much
