This article appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal. What caught my attention was this note “Sonar Mental Health, developer of the AI powered quote well-being companion” named Sonny, rolling out its hybrid model, which are struggling to meet demand for mental-health services.

The 7%–38%–55% Rule

The classic work in this area was created by Albert Mehrabian. Wikipedia says, “Albert Mehrabian (currently Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA) has become known best by his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages. His findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes have been quoted throughout human communication seminars worldwide and have become known as the 7%–38%–55% Rule (or the 3 V’s: Verbal, Vocal, and Visual). ^{(30, p. 2)}”

He studied what happened to people’s perceptions and feelings about a person when the words that person spoke were not consistent with the tone of their voice and body language. In his work, he calls these the “elements of speech.” ⁽³²⁾ What he found was:

First, there are three elements in any direct communication:

1. Words
2. Tone of Voice
3. Nonverbal Behaviors (Facial Expressions and Body Language)

Second, the non-verbal elements, tone of voice, and nonverbal behaviors are particularly important for communicating feelings and attitudes.

Third, he found that when all three elements of speech were congruent and when they agreed and sent the same message, the person communicating was better liked and what they communicated was accepted better than when they were not congruent.

Further, when the three elements were not in agreement, and the words spoken did not match the tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors, people tended to disbelieve the words and to rely more on the tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors to determine the real meaning of the communication and the attitude of the person sending the message.

The importance of words in his study (7%) was much smaller than nonverbal behaviors (55%) and tone of voice (38%).

Marshall Rosenberg PhD in his book “Nonviolent Communication, a Language Of Life” points out that human beings connect their emotions.

The suggestion that we use a chatbot makes this approach much less effective could be human beings were talking to each other. AI be able to talk to us but without the human element we are not going to get far beyond what is called the Presenting Problem. This means that the student is only going to be able to scratch the surface of the problem without the human beings efforts to go further. AI simply cannot do that.

I was appalled when I contacted the Wall Street Journal found that they would not take a comment from someone not subscribed to their publication. I am using this blog post in an effort to, in some small way, to bring my concerns to the public.

I am concerned about the appalling lack of education about how people really work in the session we have with technology.

Stay tuned for more kind of viewpoint. Why I founded Better Outcomes.

Sincerely, Louis H Kraus