Nonverbal Communication

The book argues that the meanings of nonverbal behaviors can be described by three orthogonal dimensions: positiveness, potency or status, and responsiveness. These dimensions constitute a semantic space for nonverbal communication, analogous to Osgood's semantic differential. Mehrabian states that 'the concept of implicit communication is used in preference to the misnomer, nonverbal communication.' The rejection is conceptual: much of what passes as nonverbal communication is verbal in nature—tone, vocal qualities, and implicit verbal expressions function linguistically yet convey emotional and attitudinal information outside explicit words. The book's framework treats these implicit cues as a coherent communicative system, not merely as bodily signals accompanying speech.

The three dimensions in Nonverbal Communication—positiveness, potency/status, and responsiveness—are the direct precursors of the PAD model's pleasure, dominance, and arousal. Positiveness corresponds to pleasure (liking, preference, affective valence). Potency/status corresponds to dominance (control, power, interpersonal standing). Responsiveness corresponds to arousal (activity, alertness, engagement). The 1972 book presents these dimensions as a semantic space for interpreting nonverbal signals; by 1974's An Approach to Environmental Psychology, Mehrabian and Russell had relabeled and reconceptualized them as emotional responses mediating between environmental stimuli and behavior. The same three-dimensional architecture persists across both frameworks, demonstrating remarkable theoretical continuity.

Chapter 6, 'Inconsistent Messages and Sarcasm,' addresses the central practical problem of implicit communication: what happens when verbal content contradicts nonverbal cues. Mehrabian's experiments showed that when messages are inconsistent, nonverbal signals carry more weight than the verbal content they contradict—particularly facial expressions, which have more impact than vocal signals. The book generates rules for understanding these inconsistencies, including the conditions under which sarcasm is recognized and how receivers resolve conflicting channels. This work underlies the widely cited but frequently misunderstood finding that nonverbal channels dominate in communications of feelings and attitudes. The framework specifies when and why this dominance occurs, rather than asserting a universal ratio.

Reviews were mixed. A Journal of Personality Assessment review noted the book is 'a cross between a truly integrated book and a collection of reprinted journal articles,' found the writing often opaque—quoting passages dense with statistical notation—and concluded it 'may well be worth the time and effort needed by the professional to read and understand it,' while wishing for 'the classic that might have been.' Michael Argyle's review in Contemporary Psychology acknowledged the substantial body of new findings but criticized the experimental situations as 'too brief' and 'too simple and artificial,' and observed that Mehrabian 'does not concern himself with many of the wider issues or theoretical problems.' The common assessment: rigorous empirical content, uneven presentation.

Argyle described Mehrabian's characteristic experimental style as 'very artificial, very well controlled, and use sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques.' Examples include asking subjects to approach a hat rack 'supposed to be a person of given sex and status' while measuring distance, gaze, and posture, or having subjects say 'maybe' in five degrees of friendliness for others to decode. These controlled procedures produced reliable findings about liking, status, and immediacy behaviors. The limitation Argyle identified is ecological validity: the behaviors studied were brief and the situations simple, raising questions about generalization to natural interaction. Mehrabian's later experiments moved toward more naturalistic settings such as waiting rooms, but the book's core evidence rests on laboratory procedures.

Chapter 7, 'Styles and Abilities in Implicit Communication,' examines individual differences in sending and decoding nonverbal cues. The book reports that some people are consistently better at interpreting implicit messages, and that personality attributes correlate with communication style. Appendix B provides 'Personality Measures Relating to Affective Communication,' indicating the book's empirical basis for linking dispositional variables to implicit communication performance. This concern with individual differences anticipates Mehrabian's later temperament work, where trait pleasure, arousability, and dominance become the basic dimensions for analyzing personality. The 1972 book's treatment of communication styles and abilities is an early instance of his effort to map stable individual differences onto dimensional frameworks.