Mehrabian 7–38–55: preliminary source readiness

Source content

Mehrabian 7–38–55: preliminary source readiness

Status: **HOLD — lead-level mapping only; not a dossier, verdict, admission, or publication

recommendation**

Task: EM-0027

Source-access window represented: 2026-08-23T02:18:40Z–02:44:51Z

Accepted base for this synthesis: e9ad62b18f21594258643694c55709f78b4f9a50

This packet records public, credential-free source-scout findings. It does not credit prior

model-generated notes. Publicly readable scans are access leads, not proof of reuse rights.

Provisional disposition

HOLD. The two primary identities, the narrow experimental target, the paper-level location

of the three-number proposal, the author's qualification, and a bounded propagation sample are

traceable. Source closure is incomplete: publisher full text is closed, accessible scans are

unlicensed, the 7% origin is not reported in the two papers, and the relevant book editions

and original materials are not closed.

Minimum later gates are lawful stable access or an approved quote-minimal treatment for both

version-of-record spans; independent verification of the integration paragraph; explicit

representation of the missing 7% derivation; 1971/1981 edition reconciliation; and review of

every dependence edge.

Circulated proposition versus tested propositions

The circulated proposition is that “93% of communication is nonverbal,” commonly divided into

7% words, 38% tone, and 55% body language or facial expression.

The 1967 experiments instead measured how undergraduates inferred positive, neutral, or

negative attitude toward an addressee:

1. one-word semantic content crossed with vocal tone; and

2. the neutral word “maybe” in three tones, paired with head-only facial photographs.

They did not measure all communication, natural conversation, factual comprehension,

persuasion, memory, gestures, posture, dress, spatial behavior, or three simultaneously varied

verbal/vocal/facial channels in a single experiment.

Verified primary identities, access, and quotation boundary

P1 — words and tone

Albert Mehrabian and Morton Wiener, “Decoding of inconsistent communications.”

• Journal identity: *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology* 6(1), 109–114

(May 1967).

• DOI: 10.1037/h0024532; PMID

6032751.

• Metadata:

Crossref;

OpenAlex.

• Access: the DOI redirected to an APA page that returned 403; PubMed exposed metadata but

no abstract/full text. A transient third-party scan

returned a six-page PDF, 563,059 bytes, SHA-256

d2c6cac3f178ca32a85ec29a177c2c004890333221e708fb27d6379c9b8e4ee8.

• Edition: DOI, issue header, Crossref, PubMed, and scan identity agreed; no correction or

version relation appeared in the captured Crossref record.

• License/treatment: Crossref declared no license and OpenAlex classified the work closed.

Do not archive or redistribute the scan; retain metadata and quote-minimal necessary spans.

• Study boundary: 45 undergraduates prepared word materials; a separate 30 completed the

main task. P1 reports categorical analyses and does not report a 7% verbal coefficient

or a three-channel regression.

P2 — face and tone

**Albert Mehrabian and Susan R. Ferris, “Inference of attitudes from nonverbal communication

in two channels.”**

• Journal identity: *Journal of Consulting Psychology* 31(3), 248–252 (June 1967).
• DOI: 10.1037/h0024648; PMID

6046577.

• Metadata:

Crossref;

OpenAlex.

• Access: the APA target returned 403 and PubMed listed only Ovid full text. The

university course scan

uses a credential-free but session-dependent flow: the first anonymous request returned a

117-byte HTML/meta-refresh response and set an anonymous cookie; repeating the URL with that

cookie returned a five-page PDF, 459,340 bytes, SHA-256

f9d91dfd98725e902ef24a1b478c4bb8aac5be66c2be2b5486cc0c4253711f84.

Because the carrier depends on mutable anonymous session state, it receives no durable-access

credit.

• Edition: authoritative metadata and the issue header say *Journal of Consulting

Psychology*, despite inconsistent secondary naming.

• License/treatment: no open license; public course hosting does not establish reuse rights.

Link and quote minimally; do not archive source bytes.

• Study boundary: three groups totaling 62 female undergraduates; outcome was inferred

like/dislike attitude. P2 reports A_T = 1.50 A_F + 1.03 A_V and says face received about

3/2 the vocal weight. Wider population applicability was proposed, not tested.

Cross-study derivation audit

P2's final paragraph combines its implications with P1 and suggests coefficients

.07, .38, and .55 for simultaneous verbal, vocal, and facial attitude communication. It

calls the step an extrapolation to be tested. Neither experiment manipulated all three channels.

• 1.50 / 1.03 = 1.4563, close to .55 / .38 = 1.4474.
• Reserving .07 and allocating the remaining .93 in P2's 1.50:1.03 ratio produces

.5514 and .3786.

• That arithmetic is a reconstruction, not a derivation printed in either paper.
• The origin of the initial .07 is not disclosed in P1 or P2 and cannot be recovered from

P1's reported ANOVA as a stated verbal weight.

The formula's appearance in P2 is verified; the complete derivation is unresolved.

Author qualification and edition trail

1. Albert Mehrabian author page.

- URL: kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html.

- Access receipt: 200 text/html, 3,499 bytes, SHA-256

d2e9ce6de5935b1eefcf7ada00ed2f9da11332527660fd6b98be4c909e0a5a72.

- Boundary: describes “Total Liking” and limits the equations to inconsistent messages of

feelings and attitudes, not other communication.

- License/treatment: copyrighted HTML, no open license observed; link/paraphrase and quote

minimally. The statement's original publication date remains unknown.

2. **Albert Mehrabian, *Silent Messages*.**

- Author page identity: 1981 Wadsworth edition, pp. 75–80.

- Inspected lead: 1971 Wadsworth scan,

ISBN 0-534-00059-2, 160 pages, 19,515,952 bytes, SHA-256

3223d08c89749142d9774a49e6843ee4512ef9daa70928ed8667051ef8a123c1.

The previously recorded digest

94925f4d17b626bc029ce8ae8375c8468788a179cc879f336a930b7b1273ddeb was not reproduced

from this exact URL and receives no artifact-identity credit.

- The 1971 edition states the approximate equation and its feeling-dimension boundary but

does not supply the missing .07 derivation.

- License/treatment: all rights reserved; do not preserve or redistribute scan bytes.

- Gap: 1971 and 1981 editions were not fully collated.

Bounded propagation and correction leads

These objects show circulation or correction; they are not empirical support roots.

• Highland Council, *Staff Connections*, issue 41 (December 2020):

broadens the proposition to all communication/video policy.

• Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner training deck (March 2022 URL):

broadens it to 70–93% of all communication.

• University of Birmingham, “Audio visual for events explained”:

broadens it to event communication/effectiveness.

• University of Hertfordshire, “The myths of body language”:

institutional correction emphasizing the single-word feeling-judgment context.

• University of Liverpool Prosper, “Communication”:

institutional correction describing the context-free 93% proposition as a myth.

No open licenses were observed. The purposive circulation sample is n=3 and cannot estimate

prevalence. Correction pages are leads, not substitutes for the primary papers.

Dependence, counterevidence, and gaps

• P1 and P2 are distinct article identities within one linked research program: common author,

University of California grant/pools, evaluative scale, artificial crossed-channel design,

female-recorded stimuli, and shared use of “maybe.”

• Participant and speaker overlap across papers is not reported.
• P2 cites and integrates P1; the book and author page point back to both.
• The three institutional recirculation objects repeat one lineage and add zero independent

empirical roots for “93% of communication.”

• No raw participant data, recordings, photographs, coding sheets, or analysis code were

located.

• Official publisher full text was inaccessible; third-party scans establish inspection, not

reuse rights or durable availability. The independently rechecked P2 carrier was unstable.

• No 1967 study tested three simultaneous channels.
• P2 cites P1 as pp. 108–114, while authoritative identity is 109–114; preserve the likely

citation discrepancy.

• Seeded follow-up/replication literature was not evaluated; no field-level effect conclusion

is authorized.

Bounded corpus and cost

• Nine content objects: two primary articles, one author page, one bounded book span, three

propagation objects, and two correction objects.

• Six metadata/access receipts: Crossref, PubMed, and OpenAlex for each primary article.
• Estimated later review: 6–10 focused hours with lawful stable views, or 1–2 working days

including edition collation and derivation review.

• Stop before a general nonverbal-communication review; do not count propagation as evidence

or reconstruct missing derivation as fact.

The recommendation remains HOLD pending source/edition/derivation closure and exact-head

independent review under a later task.